Customised keyword proposal

Omicrontau · 21-12-07

I recently receive a "customised keyword proposal" from the Google Adwords team. They made several suggestions including adding new keywords and recommending max CPCs. The campaign itself is very experimental and I never expected to go anywhere with it, just wanted to play a niche.

After a few days I get an email from Google which reads as follows: "Google AdWords is committed to helping you create and maintain effective advertising campaigns within your budget. We noticed that at least one of your campaigns has the potential to receive even more targeted traffic, so we've looked at your keywords and designed a proposal to bring you an increase in clicks -- without an increase in your budget."

I queried the issue with Google because it seemed so outlandish. I thought it might be fraud. I then got an email from the Adwords team as follows: "Please note
that the AdWords Optimization Team sends complimentary optimization offers and suggestions to selected AdWords customers who have been identified as strong optimization candidates...This optimization may prove to get the maximum out of your advertising."

I'd like to mention that I've been using Adwords for around a week. How could I already be a "strong optimization candidate?" Is this some ploy to sucker a novice into wasting budget. What does everyone think?

tbp · 21-12-07

In my experience, their "optimisations" are awful! Less targetted, so you get more clicks to your site, and so more money to google, but no equivalent increase in sales.

When we got an adwords account manager, they suggested optimisations, and my boss made me give them a try. A comparison of mine against theres after 2 weeks showed mine had higher sales, and a much higher ROI, so we scrapped theres.

You have to think of it in terms of looking after your own interests. You want the lowest adwords cost, and the highest rate of sales. Google isn't going to help you to do this, as they just end up losing out.

I would look over their optimisations, if you think they will help you, then by all means give them a go. If you can't see the benefits, then don't bother. Don't just go with them because they tell you to, or you assume they know better (usually they don't, as you have specific knowledge about your sector that they don't).

Omicrontau · 21-12-07

I see what you mean. This was my concern from the moment I got the proposal.

The thing that really perplexes me though is that the suggested keywords included copyrighted terms. Would my ads have appeared at all under these terms? And if they did would I have even been paid for driving traffic in this way?

I know that's an open ended question and depends on the merchant's paid search policy but this just seems like a overt attempt to spank a rookie.

Azam.net · 21-12-07

tbp is aboslutely right.

It's a scheme to get you spend more money and make Google even fatter and richer.

Shane · 22-12-07

In my experience the average google set up adgroup goes something like this :

2-4 ads of ok quality on poorly targeted keywords set at 50p per click on broad match with no negatives

I personally wouldn't run anything google set up unless you give them super clear instructions as to what keyword matching, adcopy focus, rough CPC and negatives you want in there..

tbp · 22-12-07

When they setup my campaign before, you wouldn't believe some of the keywords they came up with lol. Still have the list somewhere, i`ll have to dig it out.

There were some really bizarre phrases in there, totaly unassociated with the site or any product, almost like they`d just picked random words from the dictionary.

They do put a bit of pressure on you though. I felt quite embarrassed when they rang a couple of weeks later asking how the campaign was doing, and I told them it did really badly and rejected all their changes. I did tell them, but did feel akward telling the mighty google adwords experts their campaign was rubbish

Omicrontau · 24-12-07

They actually rang to see how you got on? No pressure there.

Anyway, just wanted to thank everyone for the advice. As I said the campaign was a niche play and nothing serious. Hopefully I can turn the tables on Goog in the future as my skill in PPC grows.

Happy Christmas all and Merry New Year

ian-d · 24-12-07

Adwords is worth its weight even if just for the keyword impression rates so you know strong words for optimising your site etc.

However, i'm still left stuck in the never ending pondery from a merchant point of view of "if a keyword is not converting, does that make it a wasteful keyword, or does the traffic still increase popularity, awareness and ultimately more conversion". I'll never find an answer