What is Google thinking…They’re shooting themselves in the foot. They might experience increased sales short-term, because advertisers will panic and increase their budget (as the CS suggests), but sooner or later everyone will know what is really going on and they’ll stop wasting their money.

Use Google Analytics, AdWords Conversion Tracking and the free website optimizer to improve understanding. For example, at the first level we might use AdWords Conversion Tracking to tell us which keywords are resulting in any sales. Spend more on those and less on the rest ;)

Google Analytics can refine the understanding, though it may take a bit of digging and delving - but you may find that some keywords have a really high bounce rate - indicating that the web page doesn’t address searchers needs very well - meaning that a new page might help improve sales response.

I think that I’d be investing effort in measurement and analysis at this point - with a view to improving the web site and optimising bidding.

THAT’S the hurdle I face.

I wouldn’t avoid AdWords. Why would you avoid the major route to market? But do exercise caution and don’t hope to pay $0.01 per click on high volume keywords - unless you run a household brand name, that is ;)

Do any of you experienced PPC marketers have a book or post to recommend?

Should I “Stay Away From Google?!”

Thanks,

Scott

I do think that this is effectively a *new* AdWords. The behaviour shows some marked differences from pre-March responses. More like “Zombified”, than “Dead”. There’s still some sign of activity…

also I think we have to take a look a way deeper than a single result to reach and understand how happened to have basically only three private companies to control the most public domain. More about at my http://adwordsfraud.com/

Drazan

Google unexplainedly issue a beating is simply Google’s way of welcoming you as a new advertiser. You’d think that a marketing savvy organisation would find a gentle way to suggest that your ad copy, keywords or landing pages could be improved, wouldn’t you?

If you’re happy with a public response to what I suspect is likely to be wrong or suboptimal, post back here with your site details and a representative keyword (e.g. company name), and I’ll take it as a (free) worked example, posted in the blog. Private advice is chargeable, though.

Google does do a lot of dubious stuff. But, IMO, their biggest error with the $5.00 MinCPC slam is a poor explanation of what it is, why it is and what you can properly do about it. It is better this year than when they first introduced it, though it is still pathetically underdeveloped as a way to encourage new advertisers to stay with AdWords, isn’t it? :(

It is a solvable problem, usually - or there is a fundamental reason why that site shouldn’t be found by search e.g. aggregating other people’s duplicated blogs in order to host AdSense, is unlikely to find favour with Google or users.