Adwords Minimum Bid

ssmorgan · #1 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 12:07 AM

I was running some Google Adwords campaigns and my minimum bid was around 50 cents. I stopped these campaigns for a few weeks. When I restarted the same campaigns with the same keywords a couple of days ago, the minimum bid for most of the keywords jumped to $10.

The only explanation on the Adwords help info is that the quality score for my ad, keywords, and/or landing page is low... but how can the quality score diminish so much in a few weeks?

Does anyone know if Google changed their Adwords criteria recently? Has anyone experienced something similar?

Thanks!

Sherif

ppcFanatic · #2 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 09:46 AM

wow Sherif, that's quite a jump. I'm not aware of any changes and I've certainly never had an ad jump that drastically. Geez... Is it a competitive keyword? But wait that shouldn't matter since you said a few days ago the minimum bid was .50

Shaun Connell · #3 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 12:39 PM

The same thing happened to me. I paused my campaigns and went from getting thousands of impressions to one per day. Yes one impression per day. It doesn't even make sense :/

#4 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 05:05 PM

I stopped using AdWords because of these same reasons. Some very strange stuff going on. I use Yahoo right now because the keywords are a bit cheaper.

ssmorgan · #5 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 10:47 PM

I am sorry to hear that you guys are experiencing the same thing. At the same time, I am glad that Google does not necessarily just hate me.

On the positive side of things, some of the minimum bids went down from $10 to $5 per click... Whoopity Doo!

At this rate, maybe it will go down to 30 or 40 cents per click by the end of the year.

I will keep you guys posted.

I signed up with Microsoft Adcenter a while ago, but never used too much, because the budgeting was a little confusing... maybe I will give it another try. I will also look into Yahoo ads.

Thanks for your comments everyone. They are a little encouraging.

ssmorgan · #6 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ppcFanatic

wow Sherif, that's quite a jump. I'm not aware of any changes and I've certainly never had an ad jump that drastically. Geez... Is it a competitive keyword? But wait that shouldn't matter since you said a few days ago the minimum bid was .50

I'll say!

So the ads were paused for a few weeks, so theoretically, the keywords could have gotten very competitive over that time, but still...

lisa · #7 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 11:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ssmorgan

I signed up with Microsoft Adcenter a while ago, but never used too much, because the budgeting was a little confusing... maybe I will give it another try. I will also look into Yahoo ads.

I just read on another forum that MSN is supposedly converting better than AdWords (of course I'm sure that varies from niche to niche) I think I am going to give it a go too, Sherif.

ssmorgan · #8 (**permalink**) 06-27-2007, 11:47 PM

hmm... very interesting info, Lisa!

Then, I will definitely look into it again. Thanks for sharing this info.

lisa · #9 (**permalink**) 07-01-2007, 07:00 PM

No problem, Sherif!

Are you still getting the jumps with your minimum bid? I'm really thinking of testing the waters with AdWords soon.

#10 (**permalink**) 07-03-2007, 07:35 AM

Sherif, the same thing happend to me, paused it for a few weeks and the price jumped to $10, except it hasn't gone back down. But I am using Yahoo and MSN and they are gong pretty good. And you may want to consider Kanoodle and Ask because they are much cheaper to advertise on.

ssmorgan · #11 (**permalink**) 07-04-2007, 02:21 PM

Lisa. They are still $5 or $10 per click on Adwords, so I am moving on...

I have been working on my SBI site the last couple of days... it's going a lot slower than I planned, but I am definitely enjoying it, so it's all good.

I planned on running some advertising campaigns in the next couple of days... MSN, Yahoo, Kanoodle, and Ask are now on my list... Thanks for the info Mavedo!

ppcFanatic · #12 (**permalink**) 07-08-2007, 11:15 AM

Yeah I'm thinking of heading over to MSN myself to give it a try.

#13 (**permalink**) 07-08-2007, 11:27 AM

Before you sign up for Yahoo and MSN, look for special offers. I know that Yahoo is offering $50 with sign up and MSN is offering $25. That's what I did and it saved me a few bucks.

ppcFanatic · #14 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 09:56 PM

Thanks Mavedo! Will check for that.

hoosier123 · #15 (**permalink**) 03-03-2008, 12:52 PM

Two months ago I started a campaign on google Adwords. The first 4 days, I was learning how to set up my keywords so I got no impressions at all. During this time I was learning how to optimize my ad and keywords. Finally, I got the keywords and quality of the ad set up according to googles tutorials and sure enough that same day I got all the clicks I had budgeted and had a good CTR according to the tutorials. Google immediately de-activated the keywords that had worked so well and left a message that I had to improve the quality of my keywords or increase the bid to .50. Several days later, they de-activated all the keywords, some that had 0 impressions, with same message. If the CTR was good and the positions were good and I reached my budget why would I want to increase the bid? Google obviously is holding the keywords hostage to extort a higher bid from me. There is no other explanation for this behaviour. Anyone else have this problem?

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