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Guest Post 4: Google needs to do better!

My fourth guest blog post is from fellow affiliate, Shane Robinson. Shane is well known in the affiliate industry and certainly knows his stuff. He always speaks from the heart and isn’t afraid to pull the punches. Here goes…

Google needs to do better! – the adwords experience isn’t good enough !

I was once your typical rabid Google fan, I loved them in every way, I would even have worn Google Y-fronts if they gave them away with the books, stickers and pens they so merrily dispersed, (apologies if that gives anyone a traumatising or arousing mental images!) However my enthusiasm has somewhat dwindled to an all time low lately as a result of recent experiences which illustrate just how much Google still needs to try harder to make the adwords experience better for the users.

If you are a new advertiser and you place your trust in Google by shutting your eyes and leaping into the abyss, then you have the potential to lose a lot of money very quickly, I dread to think how easily any new advertiser might be derailed to financial ruin if they don’t know what they are doing.

Here’s my latest fun filled adwords observations that have the potential to part the unwary from their money:

Adwords Staff Quality – “.. phrase & exact .. huh? .. what are you on about .. just use broad!”

Most adwords staff are good, knowledgeable people with very pleasant, sultry Irish accents, but some still seem to be unleashed on us with only a fundamental awareness of how adwords actually works! Check out the fabulous snippet of advice below that a colleague of mine received when it was seen that he had the same keyword in his adwords account on phrase and exact match the account manager advised :

“I would strongly recommend that you only have one instance of each keyword in your account”

When he pressed the account manager to clarify this further he was told that he should have only one instance of a keyword regardless of match, and then proceeded to tell him that broad match would be the best option as it would generate the most traffic by covering all the same traffic that phrase and exact match would receive anyway, this was explained in an email so was it was not misunderstood by my colleague.

Solution: Use multiple sources of information, read forums and blogs, learn and test, and then test again. Don’t take Google’s word for it, they are not always right even though it’s their paid search product.

Adwords Campaign Set Up – “what do you mean you want positive ROI ?”

It’s been few years since I dared to let Google set up an adwords campaign up in an account, Recently the optimisation specialist contacted a client of ours, a fun guy who is always positive and raring to try new adwords ideas, the optimiser asked about expanding the campaigns so it was agreed to let them have a go and see what they would do, we both waited with a sense of trepidation to observe what Google’s own specialists would conjure up. A week passed and then it was ready to rock, I was dismayed to find out nothing much had changed, here’s how the account was set up :

• Three ads, one with dynamic keyword insertion, (bravo good stuff!)
• Around 30 broad match keywords per Adgroup
• Not one negative keyword in the entire campaign!
• Not one phrase or exact match keyword in the entire campaign!
• Every keyword bid set at 50p

Our client agreed to let it run (I did say he was a fun guy !) … the resulting CPA was over £45 whereas normally it’s well under £10 for all other products in their range from a properly set up Adgroup.

Solution: If you do let Google set up a campaign for you, then treat it as the most fundamental of starting blocks, do not think it’s a fully working, optimised campaign or Adgroup from the PPC masters

Google Broad Match Quality – “oh you sell potatoes.. doh.. I thought you’d like tomato traffic”

Okay, say you’re an adult toys affiliate and you broad match on the term vibrator, you’d expect adult vibrator related traffic, after all the only other vibrators our there really are industrial concrete levelling ones and you would have added concrete as a negative keyword of course, you’d probably ad a few more negatives you drummed up off the word vibrators.

This is where Google’s broad match algorithm takes liberties as it would also show your ad for the totally irrelevant term vibrating alarm clock even though you never said vibrating, it actually matches vibrator to vibrating and as a result it throws up the need for another bag full of negatives related to vibrating, such as toothbrush, baby bouncer, cushion, tongue bar etc. there are countless other examples of broad match being way too broad.

Solution: Target harder, use Adwords search query reports, analytics or your own statistics package to find out what traffic your broad match and phrase terms are bringing in, if it’s a good term then add it as phrase or exact match. If it’s a bad one then add it as a negative. Don’t worry if you have a large number of negative keywords or phrases in your Adgroup or Campaign.

New Google Algorithm – “ hey buy first place .. Just up your Max CPC and let’s party”

This week Google have given notice of impending change to their ad ranking model, below are excerpts from it :

“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”
“Your actual CPC will continue to be determined by the auction, but subject to a minimum price for top spots.”
“The top ad placement formula uses your CPC bid instead of your actual CPC to determine your ad’s eligibility to appear in top spots”

It’s explained in confusing detail here and here, it would appear to be along the lines of you can get an ad into a top slot by setting your maximum CPC higher than other more relevant ads on the page, so basically if you want a top spot you can have it if you are willing to bid more for it, even though they mention ad quality the scenario is bid more and get higher but you may not get charged the full CPC, in short he with the fattest wallet still wins !
So based on Google’s poorly worded release it looks like a CPC boosting exercise to progressively increase bids across the top slots.

Solution: Double check your max bids, some of you will currently have big bids in play, yet pay a low actual CPC and be in low positions, Run at least two ads (but not too many) and optimise the worst performing one(s) regularly, Hone your Adgroups into smaller more relevant, refined and better performing ones, Exclude all irrelevant traffic, by fully utilising negative keywords, to boost the CTR, Ensure your landing page quality is great so the your adgroups are in tip top shape for the coming changes ahead i.e. Build your landing pages as if you were optimising for search engines.

The need to be running well optimised campaigns that are targeted and relevant in every aspect has never been more important, Now, not tomorrow is the time for everyone to sit themselves down & start extensively reviewing their Adwords account(s) and seriously focus on targeting every aspect of their Adgroups i.e. keyword selection, matching options, negative keywords and phrases, ad copy and max CPC etc…

I just can’t comprehend how mind bending it is now to be a new Adwords account user, you can’t trust what some people at Google tell you, The work they do for you will hemorrhage cash at warp speed unless you instruct them precisely what to do, Their broad match algorithm is so inept it can deliver totally irrelevant traffic and now they are even proactively trying to increase the bids for top slots.
I liked Google when a handful of guys owned it.. Now it’s a stock market monster it seems to frantically grasping at every straw it can as the thirst gets stronger for increased revenue to appease shareholders.

Good Luck … We are all going to need it.

Who is Shane Robinson?

 

Director of Targeted Media specialising in pay per click management and affiliate marketing.

First went online in 1999, have been working online since 2000, started using Adwords just weeks after the UK launch in 2001. I’m an avid traveller, Father of a brand conscious, SMS mad, 8 year old diva, and my claim to fame (so far) is meeting Ron Jeremy!

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Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 11:30 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.