tips # 2, 3 and 4

Tip #2: Don't be afraid to ask questions

If you're wondering about something, don't be afraid to ask Google. So far, they've always responded to my questions within a working day. There are two email addresses to use, depending on the type of question:

Please feel free to email us at adsense-tech@google.com if you have additional technical questions or concerns. For general program or account questions, please email adsense-support@google.com.

Their responses are always very polite, and they appreciate getting problem reports and suggestions.

Tip #3: Avoid non-English characters on English pages

This one is a bug, to be honest. My surname is French, and I prefer to write it out correctly with the accent grave on the first "e". Every page on my site would then include at least two accented letters, because my name shows up twice in the footer. On some pages my name shows up two or three more times.

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. But on some pages the presence of the accented characters is enough to cause AdSense to display non-relevant ads in French. This happens whether the browser indicates a preference for French or not. When I reported this to Google, this is the answer they gave me:

Hello Eric, Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We are currently working as quickly as we can to address this problem. As soon as we have more information for you, we will email you again. We appreciate your patience. Sincerely, The Google Team

Until this is resolved, I've decided to strip out all accents except on the pages that are actually in French.

Tip #4: Check your keyword density

Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do tell us that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags. Before serving ads on a page, then, you might want to check its keyword density. A good, free tool for doing this is found here:

http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

This lets you fine-tune the page before exposing it to the AdSense crawler.

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Google AdSense Tips

Many of the pages on this site display text ads from Google's AdWords program. To display these ads, a site must join Google's AdSense program. Joining is free, but not all sites are eligible to join. Once you're accepted, however, it's very simple to place the ads on your pages and to start generating revenue for your site. AdSense will serve ads that are generally very relevant to the content of a particular page. Here are some tips based on my experiences so far with the AdSense program.

Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages.

When I reworked my site, I built a skeleton set of pages that had no content, just titles and some meta tags. I displayed ads on those pages, however. Although all you see are public service ads at first, the very act of displaying ads on a page causes the AdSense web crawler to quickly fetch that page for analysis. A page with good content will thus begin showing relevant paying ads fairly quickly.

If you don't have any content, then, Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. You'll have to wait until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves. Here is what Google had to say when I asked them about how often the AdSense crawler updates a site:

Thank you for taking the time to update your site. New ads will start appearing on your site the next time our crawler re-indexes your site. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to control how often our crawlers index the content on your site. Crawling is done automatically by our bots. When new pages are added to your website or introduced to the AdSense program, our crawlers will usually get to them within 30 minutes. If you make changes to a page, however, it may take up to 2 or 3 weeks before the changes are reflected in our index. Until we are able to crawl your web pages, you may notice public service ads, for which you will not receive any earnings.

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Google Adwords Broken or Price Gouging

So I’m creating a new campaign with 40 or so keyword phrases, I submit them and I check and 38 of them are disabled with an “inactive for search increase quality or bid” message telling me I have to up my bid to $5 or $10 dollars. First of all how do they know if my ad sucks or not? It’s been in the system for less than 60 seconds. Since I’m a tinkerer I pick the best phrase and up it to $5. Now at $5 I’m not going to be making a profit, but I want to see what happens. I wait 15 to 20 minutes and there I am in the number 1 spot on the side (no premium results on this one). Ok I don’t want to be number 1, I want to be lower. I drop my bid back down the “increase quality” message is back and my ad goes away. Ok let’s try a $4.99 bid … my ad is still gone and “increase quality” message is back. So at $4.99 my ad sucks, but at $5.00 it’s ok? Clearly something is “broken” here.

This is not a $5 keyword … trust me. Are things getting so bad at the plex they have to have an automated way to force me to pay more than I want if I want my ad to show? Can you only bid on a keyword if you want to be number 1 and pay through the nose for it? C’mon Google what’s the story?

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Google AdWords CPC Price Increases

If you’ve been following WMW (see Sudden increase of CPC recently?), the Blogosphere ( see Technorati Search: adwords cpc increase), or even my blog(see Google Adwords Broken or Price Gouging ) you may have seen some some people complaining about increases in min CPC prices for AdWords campaigns. Basic recap of my situation if I bid $5.00 my ads show in the top spot and in some cases even displacing three premium listings, if I bid $4.99 my ads stop showing. If I want to play I have to be willing to play top dollar and be number one, I can’t bid for a lower spot. This happens for brand new advertisements with no history. Because I’m a tinkerer and I like to understand how things work, and because I can be a bit of a nudge and pest I really wanted to figure things out, so I decided to dig a little deeper, and get someone from AdWords to look and I’d also do some recon at Pubcon

Now to provide a little more information if the keyword converts I get a $15 payout so at $5 a click I’m going to need a 33% conversion rate just to break even. While I’m not going to say that’s impossible I will say it ain’t easy, and is pretty difficult. To be successful I really needed to pay a lower CPC for a lower position, I emailed AdWords asking how to reach that goal. After a few emails back and forth here is the response I got:

I’ve reviewed the account in question and specifically the keywords within
the Ad Group. The terms in this Ad Group are highly
competitive and will require higher CPCs, particularly when newly created.
I would suggest that you consider expanding the keyword list for this Ad
Group as well as including some additional keyword variations.
Alternatively, you can re-activate the keywords with the higher CPCs. If
these keywords perform well over time, it is likely that their required
CPCs may fall. Below I’ve included some general information regarding
inactive keywords and a link to our Help Center topic regarding optimizing
your keyword list.

Our automatic performance monitor evaluates each keyword within your
account when submitted and periodically throughout each day. When a
keyword doesn’t have a high enough Quality Score and maximum
cost-per-click (CPC) to show ads, that keyword may become inactive for
search. If you re-use that inactive keyword, or re-enter it in another
keyword matching format, you may notice that it is inactive for search
again. This is because our system recognizes that this word has not
performed well for you in the past and so is more rigorous in its
evaluation of the word.

Now I wouldn’t say that was especially clear and didn’t really answer my question as to how a I bid a lower price for a lower position. So I decided to try my luck at Pubcon. I went to the Google booth and spoke with one of the reps. Sorry I don’t remember her name but she was helpful and tried to explain things to me, and this is what I got translated into non corporate mumbo jumbo.

• When you start a new ad the average quality score used for all of the current advertisers becomes your quality score. Once your ad is running your quality score gets re-adjusted periodically (I think every few days but not positive on the time frame).
• Once you have a higher quality score your minimum CPC will lower, and allow you to bid into lower positions.
• If you pause or delete campaigns and then try to create another ad with the same keywords your quality score for those keywords will carry over to the new campaign.

So for really competitive keyword phrases you may end up paying more (in some cases a lot more) than you want for a few days in order get a good quality score and be able to lower your bid. While I get what they are trying to accomplish I really think there are quite a few problems with this approach. First off I’ve got to be wiling to overpay and lose a considerable amount of money just to be a player. Secondly using the quality score of other advertisers as my baseline seems a little unfair. Next if I write a bad ad and I want to start from scratch with a new ad using my history for quality score means I’m starting out in the hole. Now if any of Googlers happen across this post and I’ve got something wrong please let me know and I’ll correct it. However if you’ve been negatively affected by this please contact Google AdWords and let them know. Despite the fact that they are a big corporate environment, I actually believe many of them are open to new ideas and responsive to feedback. I spoke with a few people from Google at Pubcon and that they were all pretty interested in hearing what I said as long as I was constructive in the way I said it.

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Google Adwords More Pricing BS

Today, we’d like to revisit a common misconception, about which we receive quite a few questions. In the first part of the post, we will very briefly cover the most important facts and in the second we’ll take a more detailed look at four related questions.

The common misconception: Many advertisers believe that if they have no competitors for a keyword, their minimum cost-per-click (CPC) will automatically be lowered by the AdWords system to $0.01, the lowest possible CPC.

How it actually works: The minimum CPC for a keyword is not related to the number of competitors one has that keyword. Instead, minimum CPC is dependent on the Quality Score of the keyword, as it’s used in the advertiser’s account. This functionality was introduced in August 2005, when keyword bidding evolved to a quality-based model.

So what we have is an auction based advertising system that has nothing to do with auction based pricing! Because you have no idea what goes into quality score you have no idea if Google is ripping you off or price jacking you. In yet another stroke of brilliance check this out

If you look for your ad and see no competitors, this does not necessarily mean that there are no others advertising on that keyword. For example, many advertisers choose to show their ads only during particular times of the day, so you will not necessarily see them when your ad appears. Or, while you might be targeting the entire United States, competing advertisers may be regionally targeting and not including the area in which you are located — in which case you’ll not see their ads.

So lets see I’m in New York and running geotargeted ad only in NY and my pricing is affected someone in California running a geotargeted ad only in California? Really can you say that with a straight face? Exactly how much alcohol was flowing at that staff meeting because you really can’t expect anyone to believe that a bunch of rational people reached the conclusion that was logical anywhere except the bizzaro universe. Just because housing prices in San Jose are going up doesn’t mean they are in every market across the country.

Why don’t you just come out and say listen we’re going to charge you whatever we want to, and there’s nothing you can do except pay it. At least I’d respect you for not lying to me.

Somebody put me on adwords quality score debate panel at conference … please the voice of reason needs to be heard …

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New Google Adwords Formula = Just Pay Us More

The lunacy that is the Google adwords formula is actually really amusing lately, let’s take a look and dissect it line by line shall we …

Google AdWords Help Center: How is the formula for top ad placement changing?

With this new formula, instead of considering your actual CPC, we’ll consider your maximum CPC bid, which you control. This means that your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you. Therefore, if you have a high quality ad, you now have more control to achieve a top position by increasing your maximum CPC.

Your actual CPC will continue to be determined by the auction, but subject to a minimum price for top spots. The minimum price is based on the quality of your ad and is the minimum amount required for your ad to achieve top placement above Google search results. As always, the higher your ad’s quality, the less you will pay. And you will never be charged more than your maximum CPC bid.

OK there it is in it’s unchanged entirety now let’s lay it open bare why don’t we …

With this new formula, instead of considering your actual CPC, we’ll consider your maximum CPC bid, which you control.

We want to know exactly how much we can extort out of you before you’ll bail, and rather than playing guessing games, we’re going to work only with that number and ignore everything else. The fact that it costs you the most money and makes us the most profit is purely coincidental … really …

This means that your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you.

We’ve figured out that if you bid blind, and have no idea what the other people are bidding or paying (except for you pesky blackhat ppc seo’s with two accounts … oops …) it gives us the ability to extract the most profit out of you because you’re likely to over bid. We also want to make sure that we charge you the most we possibly can in case somebody below you has figured out how use the system correctly.

Therefore, if you have a high quality ad, you now have more control to achieve a top position by increasing your maximum CPC

Did we mention how much more likely we are to show your ad the more you are willing to pay us … pay no attention to that growing pile of profits over in the corner. Notice how we don’t confuse your goals of paying as little as possible with our goals of making as much profit as possible

Your actual CPC will continue to be determined by the auction, but subject to a minimum price for top spots.

Did you notice that “minimum price” wording … pretty slick how we avoided saying things were price fixed wasn’t it. How are we going to keep getting free breakfast, lunch and dinner here at the plex if we don’t take a few necessary steps, the ends totally justify the means don’t cha know.

The minimum price is based on the quality of your ad and is the minimum amount required for your ad to achieve top placement above Google search results.

You gotta love the quality score, it’s mystery factor X, pretty much allowing us to get whatever number we want on the other end. It’s like simple algebra, and we googlers love maths. We could have just said “we’re going to take the most you are willing to pay and charge you whatever percentage of it we want to, and if you aren’t bidding high enough we’ll totally say your quality score sucks” but well we like to put all that college edumacation to work and bamboozle with big words arranged in complicated ways, so you’ve got no idea what’s really going on …

As always, the higher your ad’s quality, the less you will pay.

Since you have no idea what the quality score is, we won’t tell you, and it’s completely out of your control, that’s pretty much an irrelevant factor for you isn’t it. Oh you noticed we’re the only one’s who know what that score is … and that we control it … which means we can charge you whatever we want … Listen have you seen all this yummy food we get to eat for free !!! Don’t think of it as paying too much … think of it putting food in the mouths of happy googlers who will find more ways to charge you more next year ….

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Pay-Per-Click Placement Tips

In my opinion part of any good pay-per-click campaign consists of two parts. The first part is getting good ROI, or getting the most conversions from the fewest amount of clicks and for the lowest price. The second part consists of making sure your competition is paying the most and getting the lowest ROI. To be clear I AM NOT ADVOCATING CLICKING OR CREATING CLICK FRAUD ON ANYONE’S ADVERTISING.

What I am suggesting is you use a bidding and placement strategy that makes people you are bidding against pay as much as possible, and lower their bids. This strategy works best there are only a few people seriously bidding on a word or phrase, or when you are trying to get your ad from the right side to to left side. What you want to do is keep raising your bid each day until you reach an amount where you displace the person above you. If you displaced the ad above you by outbidding them then back off your bid price just a little bit and let it sit there for a little while. While the person above you may actually be paying less than you due to a favorable quality score they will be paying a higher percentage of their bid price. Keep this pressure up as long as necessary, with the goal of getting the bidder above you to drop their bid price. What usually happens is the person relents due to loss of ROI. If people follow human nature they won’t drop the price by a nickel but instead they will drop it back down to price they are more comfortable with. Wait a week or two and slowly start dropping your price, being careful not to drop it so low you go below the person you displaced.

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