Google Price Hike?

**Riddys** · 11-07-06

Google has once again, increased overnight the keyword costs on many of my best performing keywords without explanation or given reason.
After the last price hike in April, I made sure all my pages are completely relevant to the advert content. And all my keywords are totally relevant also.
Keywords with a good CTR of over 5% in an average position of 5, have risen from 13p yesterday to 55p today.
The same has been done to well performing CTR keywords throughout my campaigns.
The adverts are clear and concise, the keywords completely related and judging by my sales volumes, what the customer is looking for.
It appears google is doing everything they can to push their paying customers towards their competitiors.
I cannot sustain these increases, I guess many others cannot either.
Guess it's time to sit and wait and see what happens.
I for one will look at alternatives. I am not prepared to go through this every three months.
Paul

**ogopogo** · 11-07-06

Same for me, my ads had high CTR, and now Google are asking me to pay 55p. What is special about 55p? Surely every ad (for different products) cannot need exactly the same minimum bid?

**Azam.net** · 11-07-06

Had a few of our keywords increase from 5p to £1

Google are getting real greedy now...

**angelabx** · 11-07-06

We've had a campaign that we were spending £900 a day on reduced to zero.

We were paying 18p a click and now they are demanding 28p, 55p, £2.75 and even £5.50.

Our top two keywords were getting 17% and 25% CTR's at 18p and now they want 55p.

The new rates are all totally uneconomic!

**ogopogo** · 12-07-06

For one adgroup I was paying 5p a click, and had a CTR of about 20% - overnight, google started demanding 55p and turned off all the keywords.
10p would wipe out my profit, 55p? It's a joke.

But when I search on google for the product, there are still plenty of "sponsored links" showing mainly ads that redirect straight to affiliate links (my ads bring people to my site). These people cannot be paying 55p, there is no way they could make a profit.

It looks like some of us are being picked on. I'm tempted to set up a new account and see how much I get charged for keywords.....

**Pete Taylor** · 12-07-06

Originally Posted by ogopogo

For one adgroup I was paying 5p a click, and had a CTR of about 20% - overnight, google started demanding 55p and turned off all the keywords.
10p would wipe out my profit, 55p? It's a joke.

But when I search on google for the product, there are still plenty of "sponsored links" showing mainly ads that redirect straight to affiliate links (my ads bring people to my site). These people cannot be paying 55p, there is no way they could make a profit.

It looks like some of us are being picked on. I'm tempted to set up a new account and see how much I get charged for keywords.....

Have you got any Adsense or any Espotting content on your site?

**KirstyM** · 12-07-06

Its not just pages containing adsense or espotting material that have been affected, seems to be any kind of affiliate landing page!

See other thread on this issue: -

http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=46163

**ian** · 12-07-06

Google release new compilation CD to acompany the latest adwords changes

Track listing

The Worst Joke Ever - REM
Virtual Insanity - Jamiraquai
Tragedy - Bee Gees
Whats Going On Lyrics - 4 Non Blondes
Money, Money, Money - Abba
Dirty Cash - Adventures of Stevie V
Money's Too Tight To Mention - Simply red
Final Straw - REM

Bonus Track

Always look on the bright side of life - Monty Python

Perhaps we could re-work the classic, 'Grandad, we love you' into 'Yahoo, we love you'

Now, back to those landing pages............

**ogopogo** · 12-07-06

Originally Posted by Pete Taylor

Have you got any Adsense or any Espotting content on your site?

No, I don't.

**pricethat** · 12-07-06

I do not know if it helps anyone but we have not had any ads at all been hit by this latest change as people say so i am unsure how it might affect us but the only things i can really offer to the thread really are that the sites we are bidding for are actually really really nice websites and there is no form of ppc advertising on the sites. I think personally that the sites really have some real function to them rather than just being a handy resource or "help people find what they want" type sites.

The other thing is we normally bid to be at the top of our search terms anyway so i guess the minimum bid is not apparent to us, i will take a look to see if there is any changes to the minimum bids and see if there is anything else i can see to maybe offer some others any help.

It really does look like an overall quality haul rather than any especially bad menace of short term money, if you look at the long term money they make out of this change it runs into billions. Making people like us make the very best in content and pages just to get into google only increases their quality and keeps them ahead of the game, of course there is no logic to some but di d you really expect them to look at them one by one? Of course it is algo's but maybe their scoring is their own business perhaps?

Not sure if any of that offers any help or clue