Google ads wierdness

SW1970 · Aug 25, 2011

Just spotted this against the keyword "electrical inspection services" in my account.

Below first page bid. First page bid estimate £62.00

Pity anyone that has rule based auto bid increase set up. Beware of many things with google ads. It's not all it's cracked up to be.

JStyleUK · Aug 25, 2011

Hi SW1970,

Sounds like you are having some issues there!

Google Adwords is actually a very effective marketing tool, and very few other marketing methods can bring you such a return on investment in such a short space of time, but you do need to know what you are doing otherwise you will lose your shirt before you even get started.

Your high bids could be due to a lot of things, such as poorly constructed adgroups that are not tightly focused, adcopy that is not as relevent to the keywords they are promoting as they should be, through to landing page quality and optimisation which is a BIG factor in getting cheaper clicks with Adwords. Plus, there are more factors besides these that need to be taken into consideration.

Given your estimated first page bid is so ridiculously high, it is more than likely something is seriously amiss with your setup that is causing this. I have seen this sort of thing time and time again and it is quite common unfortunately with people who don't fully understand how AdWords works (no offence intended).

What Quality Score does Google show for these keywords that have such stupidly high bids?

Cheers,
Steve.

SW1970 · Aug 25, 2011

Hi jstyle, welcome. Luckily I'm not caught out by this and am still wearing shirt. But I'm sure some have been because their ads are at the top with these first page bids. Qual score is 4/10. BTW I have no interest in doing well with this particular keyword because it has the dodgy inspection companies at the top. I'm just monitoring it out of interest.

JStyleUK · Aug 25, 2011

No worries.

The fact that you have a 4/10 QS means it is not optimised at all and Google thinks relevency is low, hence your high bid prices.

Also, the people who are in the top spots for this keyword are most likely paying WAY less than this bid amount as their ads/keywords/landing page will be optmised properly and hence they get much lower CPC.

Cheers,
Steve.

SW1970 · Aug 25, 2011

Really? How can a bid from one bidder be on a different scale than another bidder? Surely if a first page bid is appearing as £62 on my list, why would it be lower on another bidders list? In that case it's not a "bid" per se.

johnosman · Aug 25, 2011

The more relevant your add copy and website is to the keywords your bidding on the better quality score google will give and the less you'll pay to appear higher in the google search results.
Jstyleuk has explained it perfectly in his two posts, google wants the most relevant results near the top of the search results, the keywords you bid on and your add copy should all be as relevant as possible to your website. Keep to these principles and you'll pay less and appear higher in the search results.

JStyleUK · Aug 26, 2011

SW1970 said:
Really? How can a bid from one bidder be on a different scale than another bidder? Surely if a first page bid is appearing as £62 on my list, why would it be lower on another bidders list? In that case it's not a "bid" per se.

Yup, john has hit the nail on the head with his post too.

Even though Adwords is a bidding system, it is not just about who bids the most wins. Obviously if you want your business to never make a profit and don't mind literally pouring money down the drain, then by all means you can bid £100 per click if you want to and I can here and now guarantee you that no-one else will be bidding anywhere near this much and so your ad is likely to occupy the top slot all of the time. You probably wouldn't actually end up paying £100 per click (as this is just your bid amount and not what you end up actually paying necessarily), but there is a good chance you will end up paying way more than you need to if your campaign is not optimised properly.

Having relevent and targeted adgroups, keywords and adcopy - pointing to a relevent and optmised landing page will mean Google is likely to give you a much higher QS and therefore the ability to occupy higher ad slots with lower bids. This is how you make good ROI using AdWords.

There is a big difference between setting a campaign up and setting a campaign up properly to make you a decent ROI - this is why AdWords specialists make so much money, as there is so much to get wrong that it often just pays to outsource this to someone who knows what they are doing and get it right from the start.

Cheers,
Steve.

SW1970 · Aug 26, 2011

I understand now; it's not a bidding system (even though it says it is). Luckily, my ads are optimised properly and I am at the top for the keywords I want to be and it isn't costing very much at all! Fab!