AdRank, Affiliate Marketers and Max CPC

September 4, 2005

Posted by slamthunderhide
Apologies in advance for the length of this post (I haven’t written it yet, but it’s been brewing for a while), but there are some issues about AdRank and affiliate advertisers that neither Google nor the Perry Marshalls of the world nor anyone else I’ve found can (or is willing to) answer, and IMHO, should scare the living hell out of anyone who thinks his/her ads are safely well-positioned on Google. If AWA or anyone else out there can provide some insight here, I and I’m sure tons of others will be very grateful.

I’ve experienced something fairly since the QBA (is that what we’re calling it?) changeover, and strangely enough, it has nothing to do with minimum bids. The institution of the minimum bids had only good effects — we’re actually paying 1-4 cents for traffic that was profitable at 10-15 cents per click. However:

My company advertises using the GoogleCash method, and for those who don’t know, that simply means we shell out our own money to run Adwords campaigns for other companies’ products, and the only compensation we get is our affiliate commissions. If you know that business, you know that ever since January, Google displays only one affiliate ad per display URL — and the lucky ad that shows will be from the account with the highest AdRank for that particular keyword. Easy enough so far, right? Right.

Fast forward to August. In the seven months since January, my company carves out a very strong position for three very profitable keywords — we’ll just call them KW1, KW2 and KW3. By “very strong position,” I mean seven months of keyword history with average CTR of between 15% and 20%. Because of the AdRank we achieved on those 3 keywords, we were always the one affiliate ad that got served up. And because of Google’s rule about showing only one ad per affiliate program, none of our competitors could ever even get an *impression* on these three keywords from January through August. Even maxing out the keyword bid couldn’t displace us. It was, in essence, the Holy Grail of Adwords — owning three very profitable keywords in a position so strong that we were unassailable by competitors. Life’s good, right?

It was — until the QBA switch. On the *very day* the switchover took place, our traffic for all three keywords died. I didn’t even notice it until two days later (it was basically on autopilot due to the past six months of success). I searched on KW1, KW2 and KW3, and sure enough — there was a competitor who was, by all appearances, outranking us on all three keywords. A brand new competitor, who had no chance of even getting an *impression* on these words for the past seven months, is now outranking our company, with our 7 months of 15-20% CTR per keyword, all alone in the blue strip atop Google.

It made absolutely no sense, but there was one way to regain position — Max CPC. Even if our new competitor had a gargantuan bid, we could match it, and then our performance history would be combined with our new monster bid and we’d get our spot back. Right?

Nope. We raised bids to $20. $50. $75. All the way to $100. And we still didn’t get the position back. And I apologize for being repetitive, but let me summarize this just one final time: **Since the QBA switchover, a brand new advertiser can come in and instantly outrank an established advertiser on each of three keywords with 7 months of 15-20% CTR and a $100 Max CPC.** If that makes absolutely no sense to you, then the line forms right behind me.

I did, of course, ask Google to clarify. I suggested one of two things: an internal error in Adrank calculation, or an Adwords employee (one who precisely understands “other relevancy factors” that comprise Quality Score that the rest of us can only guess at) had simply taken his/her proprietary knowledge and set up a shadow account on the side and is cleaning up at our expense. I was assured that neither is true (although I certainly haven’t ruled out no. 2 myself). Google’s response, boiled down, was this: “Sorry you’re frustrated, but yep, you’re outranked now. Don’t ask why, because we can’t talk about other accounts. Just trust us, you’re outranked.”

I trust ‘em, all right — we’re still outranked and not showing for those keywords. But here’s the catch-22 that Google won’t comment on; in an environment where only one ad per URL will show, how can anyone OTHER than the top-ranked ad make progress toward a higher Adrank, if their ads, by definition, cannot be displayed? The natural answer is, “they can’t”, right? But that’s NOT right, and we’re the poster boy for it — we owned the no. 1 spot for 7 months, and one day, bang — we’re gone.

All I want to know is — how? The discussion, then, MUST return to these “other relevancy factors.” Adwords Advisor has mentioned that AdRank is determined as it always has, based on Max CPC. That may be true — it may be “based on Max CPC” — but everything you’ve just read above (and again, I’m sorry for the length of this thing. I just want some answers), some element(s) of the overall AdRank formula have changed significantly. And the changes are significant enough to do major damage. These were three keywords that were netting us about $100-$150 in daily profit — not retire-in-South-France money, mind you, but a very nice piece of change for logging into Adwords once a day. The worst thing about it is, we earned that money by following Google’s instructions to the letter about tight, relevant advertising — and now they’ve swept the rug from under us, and won’t tell us why.

OK, there it is. Anyone experiencing anything similar? Comments? AWA?