Google Adwords Keyword Tool is Whack

[KennyK]

Looks like Google changed their keyword search tool a bit so you can now see more info on one screen. I'm still confused about something though and I'm not sure their service is giving you accurate advice! Say you search for "iPhones" for example, then you want to get an estimate of the CPC you'll need to pay to get good results. Well, if you put in a max CPC of $100 as Ros's book suggests, you will see an estimate cost of over 2 dollars to get the top 3 ad positions. If you then put in a max CPC of just 1 dollar, the estimated cost is like 50 cents, but still for the top 3 ad positions! What the heck is this telling me? I can see how this could be very misleading, and cost you a fortune if you're not careful. Or maybe I just don't get it. Anyone? Anyone?

[mtnest]

I have noticed the same problem. Before I got banned forever I found the $1 estimates tend to be more closely related. However, I got banned before I could make a positive conclusion. Watch your campaigns and compare them to the estimates for both. You may want to try $10 also. Google will generally stop your campaign when you get to $10 per click unless the keywords are very very competative and that is their normal costs. That is what made me question the $100 estimates. I am not saying Ros is wrong because I have read other resources that suggest using $100 also. I think their algorithm is different since the new rules have been put into place over the past year.

[KennyK]

How did you get banned forever?

[mtnest]

I had signed up with adwords using a yahoo email address. During several months of running different campaigns I also signed up for a gmail email account and since gmail is google's email they decided to start sending all my email to that account for adwords and adsense. I very seldemed checked the gmail account but I check my yahoo account everyday.

I was running a campaign for renting movies and downloading them to your computer. I monitored the campaign for a few days and made some changes. One of the changes I made was to add the word "TV" to the ad. I didn't know you could not advertise downloading movies to watch on TV. It is against google's terms of service. They sent me an email to my gmail account to stop running the ad. I didn't check my adwords campaign for about 3 days and by that time I had gotten three nice emails from google to stop my ad. I deleted the ad immedidately. I decided the next day to run another ad and not use TV in it just like I did initially with success. I got another email stating my account had been closed.

I have emailed and talked to them and they say I will never be able to run a campaign on google again. But I didn't let that stop me. I opened another account under a different email address, home address and credit card. I noticed my campaign never got any impressions. I emailed google support and after a couple of days they sent me an email saying I was banned and never would be able to run any more campaigns. I am still confused how they knew it was me.

I really liked google adwords because I paid lower rates for keywords than I do with Yahoo or MSN. I am sure I will try them again in another year or two.

[KennyK]

I'm going to respond to my initial question here (for all us newbs out there evaluting Ros's system). I found a good article on WordTracker that suggests testing the waters on your Goggle ad word campaigns by shooting for about 5th ad position, and then evaluting your traffic and conversion rates. I think the moral of the story is don't trust Google, trust yourself to use smart business tactics.

P.S. And yes, I used Ros's affiliate link to order an initial WordTracker subscription. I guess her program at least works on me! Cheers, Ros