Any Google Adwords experts out there?

[8IKERDAVE]

I invest around £1000 a month into 2 Google adwords campaigns and they have worked very well for me over the past year or so. However, recently after changing absolutely nothing, the amount of enquiries coming through our site are down by around 70%! I've spoken to Google but they are very difficult to deal with, they don't understand my business and are basically robotically trained to try and increase spending.

I have a feeling this is down to a competitor continually clicking on our advert so it disappears. The click rates look to be on song at Googles end and on our homepage but nothing of any substance is coming through. Is there a way of tracking the IP addresses of people clicking then and in turn blocking this? Nothing about the business or the services we offer has changed and other channels of enquiry are coming through just fine so this is the only possible explanation (or am I missing something?)

It is almost becoming pointless advertising on there right now, but these enquiries make up almost 40% of our income so it needs sorting very quickly.

[donutsina911]

Happy to help if needed - check out this first and if any of it is Swahili or you want a hand, drop me a PM..

www.kitemedia.com/how-to-block-an-ip-address-in-ad...

[Mortgage_tom]

Have a look at https://www.clickguardian.co.uk/

I haven't personally used it but found it in the code on competitors website and thought it looked useful.

[anonymous-user]

8IKERDAVE said:

I invest around £1000 a month into 2 Google adwords campaigns and they have worked very well for me over the past year or so. However, recently after changing absolutely nothing, the amount of enquiries coming through our site are down by around 70%! I've spoken to Google but they are very difficult to deal with, they don't understand my business and are basically robotically trained to try and increase spending.

I have a feeling this is down to a competitor continually clicking on our advert so it disappears. The click rates look to be on song at Googles end and on our homepage but nothing of any substance is coming through. Is there a way of tracking the IP addresses of people clicking then and in turn blocking this? Nothing about the business or the services we offer has changed and other channels of enquiry are coming through just fine so this is the only possible explanation (or am I missing something?)

It is almost becoming pointless advertising on there right now, but these enquiries make up almost 40% of our income so it needs sorting very quickly.

Unlikely to be a nefarious competitor. It is possible, but it take quite a lot of knowledge and effort to defeat the inbuilt fraud detection techniques in adwords.

Much more likely to be a problem with your website's functionality/usability where something has changed without you realising. Or a problem with your adwords targeting, where again something has changed without you being aware.

I would start by looking at your analytics data. Check your key performance metrics like time on site, bounce rate etc. Try and see if there are any obvious changes. For example, has the bounce rate of IOS devices suddenly increased?

If the performance stats look fine, I would suggest an audit of your adwords campaign setup. And check the spend by campaign by device and look for any obvious changes.

In my experience, the answer will most likely be somewhere there.

[DSLiverpool]

8IKERDAVE said:

I invest around £1000 a month into 2 Google adwords campaigns and they have worked very well for me over the past year or so. However, recently after changing absolutely nothing, the amount of enquiries coming through our site are down by around 70%! I've spoken to Google but they are very difficult to deal with, they don't understand my business and are basically robotically trained to try and increase spending.

I have a feeling this is down to a competitor continually clicking on our advert so it disappears. The click rates look to be on song at Googles end and on our homepage but nothing of any substance is coming through. Is there a way of tracking the IP addresses of people clicking then and in turn blocking this? Nothing about the business or the services we offer has changed and other channels of enquiry are coming through just fine so this is the only possible explanation (or am I missing something?)

It is almost becoming pointless advertising on there right now, but these enquiries make up almost 40% of our income so it needs sorting very quickly.

Pay for an hour of overview by a specialist, a good one will have an idea very quickly but might need longer to sort it but at least you will know.

[Dick Dastardly]

This isn't going to be down to a competitor. Whilst all of us business types are a bit paranoid about our rivals, the reality is that very few are actively clicking each others ads. Unless you exist in a hyper-competitive space like car insurance or PPI (where it's a cesspit), it simply isn't worth the time investment to harm rivals. And most business owners/marketers don't think in this way, they spend their efforts trying to bring themselves up rather than drag others down.

You need a proper audit of your AdWords account to find out what's gone wrong. As silly as it sounds, Google isn't where you should go for this. Unless you are one of the big spenders or work with a Premier Partner agency, the support you'll get is usually very weak. The people who man the phones at Google aren't actually working at Google (it's outsourced) and they have next to no PPC experience and zero real-world business experience.

You need to find an agency or a freelancer that specialises in PPC to give you a second opinion. Unfortunately, at your spend almost all of the good agencies won't be able to help. Decent PPC staff cost a lot and you need to be spending a bit more for it to stack up.

You'll probably need to find a freelancer. Be aware that that can be fraught with problems, as most exist in the wild for a reason. Many don't mix well with others or they are a bit st at what they do. There are some great ones out there but you'll need to ask around for them and ask for recommendations from your wider business network.

What timescale are we talking about here, since the good old days to the recent trend of not converting visitors?

[Frimley111R]

As said, it is extremely unlikely to be a competitor clicking on your ads but something has clearly changed.

I have a very good expert who can help. He runs some of the biggest automotive campaigns in the UK along with many others. There's nothing he doesn't know about PPC. I've worked with him for 10 years and do so to this day. I wouldn't use anyone else. PM if you want his details

[Marcellus]

Tagging on (hijacking) the OPs topic but I'm in a not dissimilar position to the OP but I don't spend nearly as much as him.

The problem this creates me is that at if it's not really worth someone with good knowledge looking at the OPs spend then they won't even lift their head off the pillow for me .

So I have to rely on the quarterly health check appointment/calls with Google (or whoever they get to do it), had one yesterday and we;
- set some conversion goals
- added a few more words to the negative adwords list
- created some sitelink extensions
- created some added text descriptions (I think that's what they were called)

As I have little knowledge/understanding I have to relay that they know more than me and therefore what we're doing is sensible.

Are there any reasonable/good Adword experts out there for the low spend customers?

[anonymous-user]

Marcellus said:

Tagging on (hijacking) the OPs topic but I'm in a not dissimilar position to the OP but I don't spend nearly as much as him.

The problem this creates me is that at if it's not really worth someone with good knowledge looking at the OPs spend then they won't even lift their head off the pillow for me .

So I have to rely on the quarterly health check appointment/calls with Google (or whoever they get to do it), had one yesterday and we;
- set some conversion goals
- added a few more words to the negative adwords list
- created some sitelink extensions
- created some added text descriptions (I think that's what they were called)

As I have little knowledge/understanding I have to relay that they know more than me and therefore what we're doing is sensible.

Are there any reasonable/good Adword experts out there for the low spend customers?

I have used a chap called Chris Winn and would recommend him for what you need. Will charge you around £35/hr-£40/hr (which is very good value) and he is happy to work on an hourly rate to cover what you need. He is a smart guy... ex PWC chartered accountant who has decided to switch careers to do something he prefers to do. His number is 020 3286 3742.

https://epicmarketing.london/

[8IKERDAVE]

Thanks everyone, much appreciated.

We have a company who are taking over our website for us, this is all in progress at the moment. I will contact them for their support, but I thought before doing so it would be worth asking if there is a way of preventing intervention from unwanted sources.

I was under the impression that it would be as simple as blocking IP addresses but it appears after reading the comments it is likely it goes much deeper.

[DSLiverpool]

8IKERDAVE said:

We have a company who are taking over our website for us, this is all in progress at the moment.

Just throw the issue into them and ask for a quote for the audit and a management fee, as your onboard with the website they might do you a good rate.

[anonymous-user]

8IKERDAVE said:

Thanks everyone, much appreciated.

We have a company who are taking over our website for us, this is all in progress at the moment. I will contact them for their support, but I thought before doing so it would be worth asking if there is a way of preventing intervention from unwanted sources.

I was under the impression that it would be as simple as blocking IP addresses but it appears after reading the comments it is likely it goes much deeper.

Sounds like you have a good approach for getting this under control which is great. Would be good if you could update the thread once you feel you have a definitive answer on what caused the issue/s as it may then help other people who come across this thread in the future.

[anonymous-user]

I overheard someone on a train talking about ppc. They were on their way to talk to a company called Jaywing about a ppc management system called Decision

So I looked it up

https://www.jaywingintelligence.com/

Now, apart from it being likely a good few bob, it sounds interesting.

Anyone used anything similar?

[anonymous-user]

JPJPJP said:

I overheard someone on a train talking about ppc. They were on their way to talk to a company called Jaywing about a ppc management system called Decision

So I looked it up

https://www.jaywingintelligence.com/

Now, apart from it being likely a good few bob, it sounds interesting.

Anyone used anything similar?

Not heard of this company, but there are lots of companies offering to apply automatic bid optimisation algorithms for a few percent of your ad-spend.

I have spent a lot of time, effort and money investigating the best way to optimise ad-spend. In the end I decided to get a developer to write my own custom solution.

The hard bit of any adwords management is understanding which keywords generate the value. If you get this wrong, the algorithm will get it wrong as well. I also find too many adwords experts ignore or don't understand statistics and so are inclined to make decisions on what is a "good" keyword or a "bad" keyword on datasets which are far too small.

But if you have a set budget and want to get as many "conversions" for that budget as possible within a certain timeframe, some of the optimisation algorithms will do a better job than just leaving static bids.

[LarsG]

I use AdWords and I rarely have to increase the bid to more than 23p a time. My average spend is around £50 a month.

There is no need to throw money at it, you just have to be clever and manipulate your campaigns. All three of my websites which I did myself are in the top 5 positions, AdWords are generally in second place.

I'd suggest a book by Kevin Partner, 'How to set up an online business'. He gives some really good advice especially for AdWords. The book is due to be updated.

[anonymous-user]

LarsG said:

I use AdWords and I rarely have to increase the bid to more than 23p a time. My average spend is around £50 a month.

There is no need to throw money at it, you just have to be clever and manipulate your campaigns. All three of my websites which I did myself are in the top 5 positions, AdWords are generally in second place.

Sounds like you have cracked it... £0.23/click and £50/month budget. Excellent stuff. This time next year Rodney...

In all seriousness, it all depends what you are trying to achieve and how competitive the market is. My campaigns spend £50 every 15 mins during a busy evening. But rest assured they make a fair return. Although it is very easy to screw up and spend more than you want and make less than nothing.

[Digga]

One bit of advice I can freely offer is to click the "Keywords" tab in your AdWords and then click "search terms". This tells you the actual words or phrases people type into Google and see/click your ad.

It is very important to block unwanted search terms. You can do this very simply by selecting the box on the left of the term(s) and then hitting edit and remove.

Suppose, for (very simple) example, your firm sells brass and metal washers (for bolts). You do not want things like "dish washers" flagging up your ad.