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The Honeymoon Is Over – My Infatuation with Google is WaningPosted by John on June 10, 2008 in Google AdWords |
For the longest time, I’ve admittedly been one of those search marketers that’s always praising the almighty Google. Every new product was the best thing ever, and the mantra of “do no evil” rang true. This infatuation even bled into my mindset concerning the other search engines. Because I was courting Google, Yahoo! and MSN became second rate hacks that deserved my scorn. Well folks, the honeymoon is over. Now I’m eating my words.
I won’t contest that I get the best PPC results from my AdWords accounts, or that the overall potential of the program is top-rate. But some recent events have caused me to lose faith. The biggest event actually had nothing to do with Google. I launched 2 new campaigns in Yahoo! last week, both of which got hung up in the clunky YSM editorial review process. Where the glimmer of hope shone through, however, was in my Yahoo! representative. He stepped up to the plate, flat-out told me that they were having a staffing shortage and were admittedly behind on pushing things through. He went on to elaborate that in addition to the lack of capable staff, the back-end of the editorial review for ads was experiencing some technical difficulties. Despite these shortcomings, my rep. was on the phone with me every day for 5 days trying to work through the kinks until finally everything was a-ok.
Despite my anti-Yahoo! rants of old, a little bit of honesty and hard work served to alter my opinions. Now, let’s progress to this past weekend (and the bit about Google). Unbeknownst to me, on Friday evening, one of my AdWords accounts literally stopped serving ads. It sat idle all weekend, and I was greeted with an email from my newly acquired client asking why his ads were not showing on Google. I logged into the account only to find that EVERY ad in the account was disapproved for a non-working URL. I double checked the URLs (they all worked) and even called my client to ask if there were any problems with the website on Friday (of course, there weren’t). So, because I was confused to the point of aggravation, I called my Google representatives. They didn’t have any answers. No one could tell me what happened. They turned my ads back on and that was the end of the conversation!
The fun doesn’t stop there, either. Last week I linked one of my AdWords accounts to a newly created Analytics account. In my experience, when this process takes place AdWords data begins to populate in Analytics rather quickly. On Monday, I discovered that my AdWords visitors were still being lumped under organic traffic. While I can work around this (I just segment the data by landing page), I shouldn’t have to. I contacted my Google reps who stated that they would get with the Analytics team. This morning I was greeted with an email response: “Let the campaigns run for a couple of days or so.” What? My boss said it best — Google can scan, process and record millions of web pages faster than anyone around, but they can’t figure out how to get their own data to populate in their own software? Do you know what that tells me? I was given the brush off in hopes that the problem would correct itself.
Why can’t Google give me a straight answer? If there’s a problem, I would be OK with knowing that it may take time to correct a problem. But that requires being forthright with information, something which Google is notoriously bad about. Can anyone say, “Quality Score?” I just want a little bit of honesty and signs that the Goog is working hard for my business.
Disappointed. That describes how I feel. I still love Google, and will continue to use their products and be excited by their advancements. But no longer will I jump on the Google-love-train blindly. I will remember that customer service can sometimes sell a product better than the product itself. And I will remember that while Yahoo! and even MSN can really rub me the wrong way, I shouldn’t dish out scorn by default. Instead I will take the mentality of “work with what I have.”
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June 10th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’ve experienced the Disapproved URL like you described. This sounds elementary, but are you sending visitors to a secure site (https://)? I once had all my ads disapproved because I used (http://) in google and sent them to an https:// page.
-Josh
June 10th, 2008 at 11:38 am
@ Josh,
No, the website is just a plain ole http. What really kills me is that there was absolutely no change on the website (or in my account) from when the ads were disabled on Friday to when my Google rep. resubmitted the ads for approval. Something in their system killed my ads, some sort of error… but I received no explanation. Just confirmation that my ads were live again.
Thanks for commenting!
June 10th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
“…signs that the GOOG is working hard for my business.”
What you’re seeing is the fact that Google actually *doesn’t* have to work hard for your business. With such a massive share of search on the consumer side of the equation, what are your (as a PPC pro) alternatives? You can’t say “No” to running Google campaigns for your clients, as they’d go elsewhere if you tried.
Google knows this and staffs their customer service teams appropriately.
My guess, based on my background with a really big company, is that their service folks don’t have the tools and resources they need, and would want, to help you out.
Unfortunately, my prediction is that it will get worse until it gets better. And it only gets better once something else comes along to start share-shifting ad dollars to something else. What that something else is, I wish I knew and could invest in it now!
Until then, the onus will fall on the search pro world to put into place procedures to ensure that nothing goes wrong on Google’s end. Once something else comes along, GOOG will start investing in the backend tools they need to keep the dollars on their platform. I hope that’s sooner rather than later.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I experienced the same disapproved ads several days ago, and the reason was an invalid destination URL. But the URL’s were fine. I sent an email to Google and the ads came back.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
What a timely post. Today two things happened:
1. In a stats review meeting with a large, household-name client we discovered that their Yahoo traffic is converting significantly higher than their Google traffic. What are they going to do about it? Reduce their Google spend and put a lot more $ in Yahoo.
2. A different client launched some new landing pages for a Google campaign. The domain and display URL are the same, but the landing pages live at a subdomain of the main domain. Google’s own rules for landing page URLs say this is fine. But Google won’t take the ads live because the pages live at a subdomain. What they say on the phone, and what their published rules say are contradictory, and they don’t seem to care at all. Working with Google can make you feel entirely powerless—they hold all the cards.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:24 am
@ Mark,
Thanks for the comment! It would seem that me and the PPC Hero team are certainly not the only ones that have thought long and hard about this. : ) I would agree that my dedicated service reps genuinely want to help, and often provide solid responses to my requests. But they more than occasionally seem clueless, if not powerless. Very disconcerting. I’d like to think that Google is smart enough to realize that customer service is really a cornerstone of their business.
@ ATalerico,
Thanks for stopping by! We constantly struggle (as most search marketers do) to find the best ROI. That typically translates into shifting funds back and forth between the major PPC search engines. While I haven’t had any recent surges in Yahoo conversion rates, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that someone else had! As for the URL policy, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had such a big problem. I know how frustrating it is to read one thing and be told another (by the same company, no less). Have you tried contacting multiple Google personnel? When we don’t get the answer we need, we just start calling other customer service reps until we’re satisfied. This same policy applies to Yahoo’s often misguided service reps (though my dedicated rep is excellent).
June 11th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Yes John, I agree. I had the exact problem and spoke to a rep in Australia and they gave me no loving!. The lack of customer service drive can be a little frustrating.
However, my clients never complain about the ROI - so i guess you take the good with the bad.
Really enjoying the blog mate!
Keep it up.
Daniel
June 12th, 2008 at 7:41 am
@ Daniel,
Thanks for commenting and for the kind words. Here lately, “take the good with the bad” has become a common theme. It just shows how much harder all of us search marketers have to work to provide great results for our clients (or for ourselves)!
June 24th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Interesting article. I too love the big G but to be honest I’m kind of scared as to what the big G knows about us and our businesses. Their mantra of do no evil is a great mantra, but who knows what goes on behind the curtains? Although your article wasn’t so much to do with this, I must say it has been this factor that has caused me to be cautious about devoting all my time and energy to the one company and one set of products.
Certainly there is value in other search engines and traffic generated from those sources. In fact I see it all the time, conversion through organic / ppc on Yahoo!. My experience with Yahoo! account managers has been good, when I was working in Australia I had an excellent account manager who was very helpful.
I do find the Yahoo! editorial process a bit of a pita, but the “panama” release has been a godsend compared with the old “overture” system.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am
@ Gavin,
I hear it or read it every day… there’s lots of folks who are scared of the massive amounts of data that Google has acquired. While I don’t trust Google implicitly, I’m not yet to the point of abandoning ship…
But diversification is always a plus, and as you mentioned, there are plenty of other search engines that can generate quality traffic and conversions.
August 25th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
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