32 replies to this topic

[Haystack]

Two fairly common complaints I hear about Google's Adwords program are:

1. It's too expensive.
2. My ads keep getting shut down.

And both seem to be the result of usability issues with the program. While they do have a great set of instructions on how to optimize your campaigns, the default setting of wildcarding all search terms (by not putting "quotes" or [brackets] around your terms) causes frustration and financial pain for Adwords newbies.

Could Google better serve their new clients by using a different default setting?

Have any thoughts based on frustrations you had setting up your own campaigns?

[Jill]

Perhaps Google needs to make it more clear that you should use brackets to get exact matches?

To me, that was the obvious thing to do right at the start as I could never understand why anyone would not want to use exact matches.

But maybe that's not so obvious to newbies?

In some ways, it's in Google's best interest to have non-exact matching as the default as it can theoretically give them more impressions and clickthroughs. But if it makes people stop using AdWords altogether, then it's not a good long-term strategy for Google.

Jill

[Haystack]

It's in my best interest for Google to leave it as it is because it's lead to a brisk business helping clients straighten things out.

Wildcards do capture some nicely targeted traffic that exact matches would miss such as the use of the words within a question (commonly done).

[burgeltz]

As far as Google shutting your ads down, yes, that can be a pain. But one way or another when you're dealing with a PPC engine, the engine needs some way to decide if your ad is relevant.

At Overture, FindWhat, etc. your ad has to be reviewed by one of their Net Slaves, and they can make some pretty arbitrary decisions. Plus, it takes time for them to approve your ad.

At least AdWords gets your ad live immediately and lets the CTR decide if its relevant.

[Haystack]

Hi burgeltz, I definitely agree that Google's automation of relevancy based on CTR is a superior to hiring an army of editors to review search terms.

But Google could improve the usability of their system so new users have a better idea when their ads are being served. This could lead to higher CTRs and higher customer satisfaction.

[qwerty]

I agree. The first time I set up an account I knew nothing of using brackets and quotes, so at first I got a lot of clicks on irrelevant searches. Eventually I ended up with a huge list of negative keywords.

[Bernard]

Perhaps not a new default setting, but generating a warning message to first time ad creators warning if the keywords are unbounded would be a good step.

[Haystack]

Great idea Bernard. That would probably be enough to keep people from falling into the overwildcarding trap.

[burgeltz]

I see what you're saying, Haystack.

The good news is that Google is beefing up the help text on their "chose your keywords" form. I notice they're also pointing people to their Power Posting tutorial, which is a great idea (luv that Power Posting).

So maybe they're getting the message...

[DanThies]

If I owned Google (and I don't), I'd write a manual that explained all this stuff. Andrew Goodman would not be happy (since he "wrote the book" on using Adwords), but it would be a good thing for their business.

[Farhan]

Google does not have other payments options than the credit card. For larger amounts, it's really hard to keep up with them. For one of our clients, when we run the campaign, the credit card hits its limit and the account it shut down. The card is bagged for three days for security measures by the bank for excessive charging!!

Comparatively Overture does accept payments through Wires and Bank transfers which makes it a lot easier to pay them. We have written this to Google a couple of times, but to no avail.

[DanThies]

The major difficulty is that they keep raising the amount which they will charge. If you make your $50 payments and keep spending more than that, they will keep raising the amount. For a large campaign, you almost need to use American Express.

[Haystack]

Andrew Goodman would not be happy (since he "wrote the book" on using Adwords), but it would be a good thing for their business.

Maybe they could contract with Andrew to create a Max Headroom-like interactive tutorial for Adwords?

Farhan, it sounds like your client might want to make a quick call to their credit card company to have their card's limit increased.

[Farhan]

I forgot to mention that to avoid fraudulent transactions, the banks over here set a daily limit on your credit. This includes both the amount of transactions and/or the amount of charging. Our client has a sufficient limit on their credit card, and it's not the limit but the overall bank policy that is bothering us. So, we asked Google to accept payments through some other way, but they couldn’t

[Herbert]

@Farhan & all
Hi, its me the newbie
I hope to learn a lot for all topics here from you, guys
My 1st posting:
I did the same in germany to google.de: they only have the credit card for payments. I wrote 2 mails, but I got the same answer: --"we will check for the future to have bank transfers etc."--
So, I think they will _never_ switch over to payments like Overture or Espotting ...