Typo keywords with adwords

[Dazza30]

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Ive just started messing around with typo keywords.

Has anyone any experience of using these with google adwords. If so what are your conclusions?

[findlite]

I dont use adwords but I do target typo keywords in the serps with Google. They are a great way to obtain easy traffic and there is money to be made off the back of them.......

[Dazza30]

What id like to know is, does googles quality score system prevent or make the use of typo's irelevent?

[pete_m]

Typos can work very well, especially when you're using a typo of a non-dictionary word.

[grobinso]

What id like to know is, does googles quality score system prevent or make the use of typo's irelevent?

Quality Score !, its a joke

Just got Google Slapped yesterday, 182 keywords wiped out including my main bread earners. The ones they left me with were mainly TYPO errors, you wouldnt find them anywhere in my ads or on my pages so what does that say about 'Quality Score'

Interestingly out of 5 Ad groups in the campaign, only 1 was active at the time, however as i slowly activated more groups they immediately (within a couple of minutes) miraculously changed from having 'Excellent' Qualiy Scores to 'Poor' and were hit with £5 minimum bids.

Now these Ad Groups of course promote different products to each other and therefore have different keywords so this proves to me that its a waste of time trying to improve your Ad's or your Pages as Google have obviously made a blanket decision about the site and whatever campaign you set up will be hit with rediculous minimum bids.

I purchased the domain as a 'throwaway' domain' and only intended it be used as a landing page for a short lived campaign so i'm not too upset about this (although it hurts not to feel loved by Google :-) so before i ditch it i've just put up new ad group and stuck some quality keywords in there, lets see how long its active before it gets slapped.

Also, is it just coincidence the slap came the same day i got a response back from Adwords 'support' ( i use that term loosely) to a query of mine? i think not !

Graham


Sorry if this post is in in the wrong area but it is loosely connected to the original post

[Dazza30]

Quality Score !, its a joke

Just got Google Slapped yesterday, 182 keywords wiped out including my main bread earners. The ones they left me with were mainly TYPO errors, you wouldnt find them anywhere in my ads or on my pages so what does that say about 'Quality Score'

I assumed that google would dissalow the use of typo's due to quality score.

[Marcus-Hill]

It is a good technique that I doubt alot of SEO use.
Give it a go on a few of your pages and test them

[tbp]

I assumed that google would dissalow the use of typo's due to quality score.

This was one of the stupidest things about the Google slap!

I had 5 keywords remaining out of 477... and all of these were for typo's that weren't found anyware on the landing page.

Totally goes against their so called "Quality Score"

[Dazza30]

This was one of the stupidest things about the Google slap!

I had 5 keywords remaining out of 477... and all of these were for typo's that weren't found anyware on the landing page.

Totally goes against their so called "Quality Score"

Hi tbp

So your relevent keywords where dissallowed and the typo's which arent on your landing page or your adds where allowed.

Weird!

[tbp]

So your relevent keywords where dissallowed and the typo's which arent on your landing page or your adds where allowed.

Yes, exactly that.

Thats why i`m so pissed off about the whole thing. If there was some logic there and you could see why they were doing it, even if I still lost my campaign I wouldn't of minded too much.

If there was logic behind it and a clear set of guidelines, I could of just updated my site, had my campaign restarted and everyones happy.

When none of it makes sense, and the end result is a much worse experience for surfers its just plain stupid.

[Dazza30]

I take it you sent google a nice email ?

[tbp]

I take it you sent google a nice email ?

LOL, well I did send Google an email, but bit my tongue and was polite, and asked what the problems were with the site, and explained if they could let me know what needed to be done to get the site up to their standard I would it.

However, all I got was a canned response, referring me to the FAQ's which are no help whatsover. It said to reply to the email if it hadn't answered my questions, so I did, but got no response.

I have to say their customer service is terrible. I got a very snotty email a couple of months ago asking why I had dared to do a chargeback on credit card for an adwords bill. It wasn't business like at all, and had a really nasty tone. The email wasn't meant for me however, when I read it again I found it was for a totally different adwords account, nothing to do with mine. I sent back and email explaining it had nothing to do with mine, and asking for an apology, but again got no reply.

I`ve always had a lot of respect for Google, but this is rapidly diminishing.

It seems to be the same with all big companies, they get to a certain size and then don't give a toss about anyone, and their customer service becomes none existant. They think that they rule the world and are too big too be toppled, but this isn't the case, you only have to piss off enough people and even the mighty can come tumbling down..

[jonsp]

It seems to be the same with all big companies, they get to a certain size and then don't give a toss about anyone, and their customer service becomes none existant. They think that they rule the world and are too big too be toppled, but this isn't the case, you only have to piss off enough people and even the mighty can come tumbling down..

That's no doubt true but as affiliates we need Adwords more than Adwords needs us. Getting mad at G probably isn't a help. Google does seem to be trying to provide the best experience for their users (not their advertisers) which I think is a very wise move. It's up to advertisers to modify their actions to meet Google's expectations on one level G presents an oppurtunity with their "slaps" as an advertiser I'm always more than happy to see other affiliates not being able/willing to comply with Google's needs - it all means less competition - ie more money - for those affs who can.

Cheers,
Jon

[tbp]

Google does seem to be trying to provide the best experience for their users (not their advertisers) which I think is a very wise move.

I did used to agree with this, and my complaint is not sour grapes because i`ve been slapped. If I ran a low quality spammy site, then it wouldn't of bothered me as i`d of known it was coming. However, I worked hard to produce a quality site, which helped people to make an informed decision about the product advertised. I believe I achieved this, as I had a 50 - 60% conversion rate which is pretty high for an affiliate site.

This latest slap is NOT good for users, and thats what annoys me. In the first place, a lot of highly relevant adwords ad's have dissapeared. Now, when you do a search, in many areas you get a number of adverts that are hardly relevant at all, matched on the broadest of broad match terms. These were ones that were buried, but have moved up now that the relevant ad's have gone. These ads have been allowed to continue not because they are relevant or high quality, but purely because they are merchant sites.

On top of this, you only have to read all the ways round it people are talking about on this forum to get round the slap. Fake cart and checkout pages, affiliate sites which have no affiliate links, but then take you to another site with affiliate links, and then on to the merchant, adding extra steps to the buying process. How do these make the experience better for googles users?

It also seems unfair that some awful sites remain, single page sites with no text and just a couple of links to merchants. These offer no help to the user, again just adding steps to the buying process. Again, you cannot say these make the experience better for users.

I have always been a big fan of google. When things have happened in the past, I could see why, and yes it may have forced me to do some extra work to make my site better. I don't mind this if theres a genuine reason.

However, this latest slap does not offer benefits for the users, if anything it is going to make things worse for both affiliates and for users.

Up till now, a lot of affiliates have avoided black hat techniques because if you did create a quality site and avoided them, you were rewarded. You got your place in google, and it forced you to make your site the best for your users.

Now that you are going to get slapped anyway, more and more people are going to try to game people by utilising black hat techniques. Its always a game of catch up with the black hats leading, and google following.

as an advertiser I'm always more than happy to see other affiliates not being able/willing to comply with Google's needs - it all means less competition - ie more money - for those affs who can.

How exactly are you going to comply?

How can you run an affiliate site if you need a checkout on it? How can you run an affiliate site where you don't have affiliate links, but links direct to the merchant.

These are things google are looking for, but how as an affiliate can you comply with this? By nature, a site that has the above is not an affiliate site.

Quality is no longer enough. I got slapped and yet my site remains at number 1 in both UK and US searches, and outranks the merchants. If Google deem my site fit for number 1 position, then they obviously deem it to be a quality site.

Yet this is not good enough to be able to use adwords, so in effect, quality is not a big factor in whether you can advertise on adwords or not.

In my area, all that remained were merchant sites. Some of these sites were awful, but it didn't matter - they had a checkout!

Im sorry to post yet another rant, but it does annoy me when people say google are doing it for the best. Ordinarily I am the first to agree with this, but in this instance it is most definately not the case!