AdWords Ups the Ante

Google announced on the AdWords blog that they would be rolling out a number of changes and they are all happening this week.

First we saw on Monday the line next to the keyword that says something like you will need to pay $16 a click to be on the first page of results. It is interesting that some of the keywords that this phrase had been placed next to already showed an average placement of 1 to 3.

Next we saw on a number of account Tuesday and Wednesday a significant drop in ad position causing us to increase the CPC across the board and by keyword depending on the situation.

I have not yet seen a significant rise or drop in impressions yet in accounts. Some accounts I have started to notice that there is more activity on more keywords, but not across the board on all accounts.

Clearly Google is working to tweak AdWords.  To find out exactly what AdWords has announced, please visit this post on the AdWords blog.

In a nutshell here is what the changes are about:

Quality Score is now more accurate — because it is calculated at the time of each search query

Keywords are no longer marked ‘inactive for search‘ — all keywords are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query

‘First page bid estimates’ replace ‘minimum bids’ in your account — providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers

Remember when Google recommends a budget or a cost per click this is called add-on selling. It does not mean that you need to act on the advice!

Clearly from what we are seeing across many sectors there is an upwards price adjustment happening, but will this impact an account with more impressions and a lower CTR. It is all too new to know exactly, but one thing for sure is that CPC is moving up and strongly on some accounts.