Comments on: Google AdWords – Bid Gouging

By: tommy jonq

tommy jonq — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:01:55 +0000

so far, it seems to me (i’m actually selling something; i’m not an affiliate marketer) that google really does try to trick you into, among other things, bidding against yourself. there is simply no other explanation for why the minimum bid goes up every single day at midnight, when i am the ONLY advertiser on a certain keyword. so far as the “quality” baloney goes, i’m the only advertiser on some of my keywords who is actually selling what he says he’s selling. ironically, the most “misleading” of my ads (compared to the keyword, not the actual product) are the ones google seems to think are the “highest” quality.

well, two can play this hustle. i keep my google adwords spending under $1 per day, and simply publish a new ad every day in order to build TOMA through impressions, and don’t even go for clicks. i’m getting 100,000 impressions per week for less than $5. and the whole time, google thinks they’re hustling ME. this kind of old-fashioned marketing takes time, but in the long run, it’s working as a supplement to my other marketing. but as far as google adwords ppc goes, in and of itself it’s worthless to me.

By: Scott Weaver

Scott Weaver — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:19:06 +0000

@Chris: Haha.. you know, that’s not a bad idea. I was pretty shaken when it happened to me. Somebody went screeeech on the record.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:11:28 +0000

As someone who is mid-google-slap at the moment, I’d just like to say thanks for this post.

I think you should get a government grant to set up some kind of google-slap self help group.

By: Scott Weaver

Scott Weaver — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:46:03 +0000

@Skip: Hmm, well. Perhaps for the keyword you’re bidding on, you might need to bid a bit higher to trigger the re-consideration. That’s what I’d bet on. But it’s risky business.

By: Skip

Skip — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:27:14 +0000

I have it set to $2.50 cents now for the past week or so and it still hasn’t went live or received any impressions.

By: Scott Weaver

Scott Weaver — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:54:18 +0000

@Skip: How long did you wait for it to accept your $2.50?

I actually had to move it up to $2.00 from $1.00 to get it going.

I would never do a $10 minimum unless the payout was justifiably so high.

By: Skip

Skip — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:56:31 +0000

I tried that as well previously. Google was asking for minimum bid $5 and I bumped mine up to $2.50 to see if it would eventually accept it and it never did. One a $5 minimum bid asking price, what did you have to move it up to for Google to eventually push some traffic your way? What about on $10 min?

By: Scott Weaver

Scott Weaver — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:57:21 +0000

@Skip: The latter.

By: Scott Weaver

Scott Weaver — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:57:02 +0000

@J.D.: Well, as much as I agree with you, aside from Google being a bit evil in this practice, it’s the people who take advantage of the low bid prices that causes them to enforce quality standards. Google really just wants to maintain their spotless reputation. The trouble is, they don’t seem to care much in the way of customer service.

By: Skip

Skip — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:09:22 +0000

I’m not following you. So you increased your bids to meet the minimum $5 – $10 and then eventually adjusted them down? Or you moved your bids higher, but not high enough to meet the minimum and suddenly they just happened to start getting traffic again?