It feels like playing Mind Games with Google Adwords. Two days ago I uploaded a campaign and received pretty good results. Great CTR, great conversion. It’s a very targeted campaign and open/honest enough to the visitor. I received quality score ratings 90% as “great” and minimum bid prices varied from $0.02 and $0.05 mainly. A few keywords were rated as “Good” and click prices were $0.10. Those keywords I deleted as I do not wanted to bid that high. So, overall I think I was doing well. Quality score good, CTRs good, Conversions good - show me the money.

But I was wrong. When I finally came home last night and had time to review my campaigns I discovered several keywords showing new minimum bid prices. It was not a “normal” Google Slap where prices go past $10.00 or so, but the quality score was changed and minimum bid prices went up accordingly. I would still break even or make a small profit, but overall it would put me more at risk with these campaigns. So, instead of scaling up my campaigns I was doing cleanup and recovery. From what it looks like now I am at maybe 30% in volume and revenue compared to yesterday.

Then I setup more campaigns. I usually wait about 10 minutes after uploading a campaign and then go in and check keywords and quality score. I sorted through everything, deleted keywords made adjustments and then finally set the ad scheduler to the time I wanted to run these campaigns. I uploaded more campaigns and did more maintenance work. I decided to check on something on my earlier uploaded campaign and - WTF - quality scores had changed again in over 50% of my uploaded ad groups and keywords. Come on, Google. I do accept your quality score stuff, but do not give me extra work by making me go back several times to check my your work. You want me to spend my money on Adwords and I want to see a fair ROI from my ads. Don’t water down my profits by making it so difficult and cumbersome.

This morning I am still seeing high CTRs and good conversions - but with many good keywords gone the volume is way down. We’ll see how things look like tonight and then I can hopefully spend some time in moving this campaign from testing to production and expand my keyword lists.

Tools I am using: SpeedPPC and Adwords Editor.
Music I am listening to right now: George Thorougood - Night Time (Live)