Google Adwords Slap of 5th March 08

HarveyC · 05-03-08

Minimum bids up to £5, and poor quality score on a number of campaigns here.

Wasn't anything about it on here, so if you've had the same problem find info on this page:

All keywords magicly became inactive?

Would be interesting to hear posts from an affiliate perspective.

tbp · 05-03-08

Bugger!

Well that explains my low sales today, must admit I don't check adwords that often now.

Half of mine have gone up to £2.50, the rest £5!

10 out of 480 left active, and they are really bizarre ones, misspellings that aren't on my landing page - would of thought they would have been the ones to go.

This has got to be a bug! Can't see any way it could be a legitimate update, especially as I had a great quality score up till now, and the campaign has been doing really well for the last 5 - 6 months.

Going to try swapping over the domain, and seeing if that makes a difference - fingers crossed!

Thanks for the heads up! Stupidly didn't check adwords and just thought I was having a bad day. Will let you know if the domain change works (it has done before, so i`m hoping).

HarveyC · 05-03-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by tbp

(it has done before, so i`m hoping).

Same here - the most interesting thing is the same thing happened to a site of mine about 6 months ago, and I transferred it to a new domain, after adding new content, privacy policy, contact page etc. - 6 months later and it happens all over again!

DioBach · 05-03-08

I wonder if they're just targeting affiliate sites? It's been on the cards.

tbp · 05-03-08

I`ve tried switching to a different domain I already had, but unfortunately no difference.

Also tried deleting all the keywords and adding them again, but again not difference.

Going to buy a brand new domain and try that now, and if that doesn't work all I can do is give up.

I really do think this is a cock up though, an Algo gone out of control or something - the amount of people who seem to have been hit for no reason suggests google is going to lose huge amounts of revenue!

UPDATE: In the last 10 minutes, 5 of the remaining 10 keywords have also been marked inactive!

UPDATE 2: Now the rest have gone, been wiped out totally now!

tbp · 06-03-08

Quote:

I wonder if they're just targeting affiliate sites? It's been on the cards.

Just been looking at my particular area, and there are very few ad's left.

However, the ones that are left are all true merchant sites, all the affiliates have gone.

It may be they are targeting affiliate sites, but surely they are going to lose a hell of a lot of money doing this!

I`ve decided not to do any more now, will just sit back and see what happens, not going to put a load of work in when it may not help, and it could just be an error.

Affi Liate · 06-03-08

This is a disaster.

I just checked my accounts and found I had one of my keywords slapped!

Check it out here:

"Increase quality or bid £0.03 to activate"

I'm ruined.

Affi Tastic

Edit: OK That's a bit harsh...

Just been chatting with TBP and I know it can have a very adverse effect.

I'd do nothing for 48 hours - see what happens.

Like the song:

"Don't go changing...."

....Just yet...

Af.

ian-d · 06-03-08

lol.

I've been affected too, didn't realise either until tonight, damn google, you hit only my biggest earner!!!

But never mind

Have dropped adwords an email for an explanation, this should be interesting

KirstyM · 06-03-08

Pfft.... interesting?!

Yeah...

"Dear Scummy Affiliate,

We really can't be ars*d giving you a personal response to your question RE: Why Have You Killed All My Ads?

We therefore are sending you our bog standard impersonal reply which won't actually answer your question. We are aware this will irritate you... its just that we don't give a damn!"

DioBach · 06-03-08

Just a thought, if it is targeting on affiliate links - are the ones getting slapped using masked links or the clean affiliate link? Wonder if it's worth thinking about (I think it was Jason Duke said it here) running your affiliate links through to a secure site and redirecting via cart.php or some similar ruse to make you look like a merchant. Spotted one of my sites has been spanked as well.

ian-d · 06-03-08

To help rule it out, my merchant businesses which use a seperate adwords account are fine, and most of my affiliate sites are too, using the same link process as one that has been slapped, so there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern!

I got an automated response from google like Kirsty, so have replied back to them having a go, won't do any good though, i asked them for compensation to cover my losses

All i've done this morning is re-create the campaign, just add new, copy the existing, use the same url's as before etc and everything is up and running again, the only problem is you won't have continued reports on keyword impressions from months ago etc, but i can live without that for this one, its none important!!!

drivetowin · 06-03-08

One interest