Google inactivating my keywords?

[Marcie]

Does anyone know exactly why this happens? I get the message:

17 keyword(s) are currently inactive for search.
These keywords are marked in the Status column of the Keywords tab below. Improve their quality through optimization, delete them, or raise the keywords' bids to the minimum bids indicated. (Raising the bids to at least the minimum will activate the keywords.)

I think I understand the sentiment, but the thing is they deactivated some of my best-performing keywords, in one case it had an 11% CTR, and they are asking $5.00 CPC (up from .39) to reactivate it! :eek:

[jetpacklife]

Sounds like a problem with the /quality/ of the landing page. Yeah, they base the bid on the landing page.

There are lots of tricks for improving that score, which will lower your bids.

You'll have to google adwords page quality score.

[Marcie]

Thanks! I am learning as I go :)

Edited to say - apparently there was a change to the logarithm for quality score and a lot of people are complaining about it. I have made some changes to my landing page as I was planning to do during testing anyway, we'll see what happens...

[Vagabond]

Thanks! I am learning as I go :)

Edited to say - apparently there was a change to the logarithm for quality score and a lot of people are complaining about it. I have made some changes to my landing page as I was planning to do during testing anyway, we'll see what happens...


i read about that on a website that someone posted yesterday, the guy who wrote the guide said that google does a "kick out" and raised his bids from
0.33 to something like $10 also. Ill find the link and post it...


edit: http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-supreme/13619-google-adwords-newbies-guide.html

[Drewkerr]

This is why i HATE GOOOGLE!!!!!

[darrin365]

Basically, what Google has done is assume - based on your website and keywords - that you're website is dedicated to making you money while delivering little content value to users. So Google has decided to up the cost of keywords to "share" in your profits.

Logical if you were making tons of money, but frustrating and costly to those of us who are newbies.

When you start a new AdWords campaign, one of the things you can do is to divide up your keywords into smaller ad groups. Each with 25 or fewer keywords per group. This seems to help some with Google (although now that they've pegged you for higher rates, it may take some time for those rates to drop again.

A cool tool that helps organize and create your keyword campaigns is Googles AdWords editor. Look for it in the Tools section of your AdWords account. I just downloaded it tonight, but I can already tell it's going to save me tons of time.

[Webzu]

It's only going to get tougher as Google tries to ensure quality sites are popping up in the searches. Quality content is what they're after and one page site selling a product is being kicked out and as you've seen the keyword price goes way up. It's a good idea to develop a quality content website (which takes time) since things are getting even harder with google.

[Vagabond]

I think thats ridiculous that google does that. Keyword bid prices are the free market value of the keyword. The fact that a keyword is benefitting someone is what the sponsored links are all about. By artificially raising the prices because youre making money is basically taxing your profits. I dont think thats fair AT ALL in fact will definitely cause me to spend a money in the other search engines, ill use the analytics google provides but then just apply that to yahoo search etc..

I hope Google doesnt start getting carried away since theyre the undisputed leader in search.

Sponsored links are a mutually beneficial relationship.

[Webzu]

He/she with all the gold makes the rules and Google has all the gold when it comes to search.

Their end goal is providing the average user a positive experience so that when they search they find what they're looking for not a page full of affiliate links and that's what they're trying to fight against.

A lot of the Internet marketers went overboard with AdSense type template sites and other tricks to get you to click without really helping the user find what they were using. If people get fed up and stop using Google because the pages being served during searches are crap then google who will lose business.

That's how google passed Yahoo and MSN as a search company in a few years even though they started up like 5-6 years after them.

Sucks for us but I see what they're trying to do.

[Vagabond]

He/she with all the gold makes the rules and Google has all the gold when it comes to search.

Their end goal is providing the average user a positive experience so that when they search they find what they're looking for not a page full of affiliate links and that's what they're trying to fight against.

A lot of the Internet marketers went overboard with AdSense type template sites and other tricks to get you to click without really helping the user find what they were using. If people get fed up and stop using Google because the pages being served during searches are crap then google who will lose business.

That's how google passed Yahoo and MSN as a search company in a few years even though they started up like 5-6 years after them.

Sucks for us but I see what they're trying to do.


I can see that with organic searches, but with with sponsored links if youre paying for the top spot and youre getting conversions, that basically the name of the game no?

[Webzu]

I can see that with organic searches, but with with sponsored links if youre paying for the top spot and youre getting conversions, that basically the name of the game no?

For us yes but not for Google. The name of the game for them is relevant search. Google is even going as far as saying they don't like paid text links on other sites.

Even the paid ones your rank is determined by the clicks so even if you pay .20 cents per click and someone else bids $1.00 per click if your CTR is higher then the other ad your ad will rank higher even though you bid less. Google considers you ad to be more related to what the users are searching for vs the other one and you will be "rewarded" with top ranking in the paid searches. That's why the headline and ad copy is so important.

[Marcie]

For the record, and I am a newbie, but I don't feel like I can do anything more to make my landing page more relavent. As I have posted elsewhere, it's very niche, it's a market research report for a specific manufacturing industry (hence a B2B product) The landing page has a little marketing spiel above the fold and then a detailed table of contents of the report...the ad says:

New (product) Market Report
The US Market for (product) 2007
www.url.com

What I am wondering is, because of TOC, a lot of the keywords are repeated, oh about 40 times in the TOC, maybe the "logarithm" thinks I am displaying the keywords too many times to try to trick it???

Thanks :)
~Marcie

[Webzu]

For the record, and I am a newbie, but I don't feel like I can do anything more to make my landing page more relavent. As I have posted elsewhere, it's very niche, it's a market research report for a specific manufacturing industry (hence a B2B product) The landing page has a little marketing spiel above the fold and then a detailed table of contents of the report...the ad says:

New (product) Market Report
The US Market for (product) 2007
www.url.com

What I am wondering is, because of TOC, a lot of the keywords are repeated, oh about 40 times in the TOC, maybe the "logarithm" thinks I am displaying the keywords too many times to try to trick it???

Thanks :)
~Marcie

I've read from a few of the experts that say keyword density is no longer that big a factor.

Rule of thumb...if it reads normal and you have your keyword repeated 40 times you're fine but if it sounds odd when you read it you might be going overboard with your keyword density.

Keyword stuffing is a no-no so Google would ban you so the fact your PPC price went up, I don't think your keyword density is the problem.

What is your click-through rate? If you're not getting a lot clicks to your ad google considers your web site not relevant to the keyword your bidding on and they jack the price up.

You can check your keyword density with this tool (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/) but I wouldn't worry about it too much. Do the read test if it reads fine your ok, if it reads weird because of all the times you repeated a keyword tone it down.

I suggest you need to work on your ad copy, the example above doesn't seem like it would compel people to click. Your headline and ad copy are very important to get those prospects to click and those clicks determine how relevant your ad is according to Google.

[Marcie]

Thanks! Um, that's the thing, it seemed like they turned off the ones with good CTR - averaging about 4%, one of them was getting 11%...some lower than 1%, not really sure what the reasoning is. I am actually very happy with the CTR, I was expecting less than the standard 2% because of the nichey-ness.

I'll do some tweaking tomorrow, I was planning to anyway :)

~Marcie

[Webzu]

Thanks! Um, that's the thing, it seemed like they turned off the ones with good CTR - averaging about 4%, one of them was getting 11%...some lower than 1%, not really sure what the reasoning is. I am actually very happy with the CTR, I was expecting less than the standard 2% because of the nichey-ness.

I'll do some tweaking tomorrow, I was planning to anyway :)

~Marcie

Yep Google is tough to figure out sometimes...all we have left is tweaking! If any of us figure them out we would have a million dollar muse in our hands. Let us know how it goes. :)