What am I not understanding here?

Hi

I just opened an adwords campaign, and am setting up a split test on 4 ads.

Something I don't understand about keywords, for example - 'wedding reception music'.  Yesterday, I set up a test ad, just to get the hang of it.  I used that phrase as one of my keywords, along with a whole lot of related keywords. 

Today, I deleted that campaign, ready to set up a proper split test.  When I entered the keywords, most of them similar to the ones I entered yesterday, Google is now telling me that the minimum  bids are $5 or $10, even though yesterday they were well below $1.

In my Hexatrack analysis, the CPC for 'wedding recption music' is $0.83.  Google is asking $10.00.

My questions are

- why did the minimum bids jump up so quick?
- how can those bids be related to the real market if they were so low yesterday?  I can understand bids starting out low and increasing over time, but not in 24 hours.  It's like Google are saying - OK, yesterday we weren't sure, but now we know you want these, so we're gonna increase the price 1000%
- how do Google get the $10 figure when your stats show that the CPC is only $0.83?
- what fundamental am I missing here?  I haven't quite worked this out yet.

Thanks for your time guys - great tool you have BTW.

Cheers

Shaun Thomson
AUSTRALIA

Quality Score is something Google can calculate almost immediately or over a couple days.

Google will look at your site and immediately determine the content of the site and make an automated decision (sometimes manual) on the keywords you are bidding on and whether it is relevant to the landing page.  If they like it, G will keep lower bids. 

Your ad copy, ad text, keywords, keyword matching, CTR, landing page, and other things are all major factors for Quality Score.

Over the next day (or couple days) G looks and uses your data, mostly CTR, along with other factors, and another scan of the site. Google will then lower or higher your bid.  If Google raised your bid, the common term is that you were "slapped".  Google is basically saying that your site is not relevant and the CTR is not good enough to advertise on their site.

HexaTrack will show you the bid of .83 because that is the highest bid you will pay if you have GOOD quality score and be in the #1 position. 

How do you get around the Quality Score Slap?  Couple things

1) Change your landing page and/or add more content.
2) Raise your bids to $10 temporarily, and then slowly lower them back to where they were. (BE CAREFUL WITH THIS METHOD!)
3) Change your Ad Copy.
4) Switch domains.
5) So many more, testing is the key. 

We will be releasing a PDF explaining all this in the coming weeks which will help explain all this.  Stay Tuned!

Hope this helped...

-Amish

Use Google's landing page optimizer to fix your landing page.

http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/

Thank you Sky

This is what a forum is all about

I found this goodle page a long time a go but as I was not interested in the
market then, I forgot all about it.

Now after your post, it is on my desk top

Steve

[Karl Steinmann]

Use Google's landing page optimizer to fix your landing page.

http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/

Thanks for that tip. I was sorta aware of that tool, but now I'm going to be sure to make good use of it!