Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Google busted me



Ok, I got caught. A few posts down you'll see I ran local town searches on Google and noticed hardly anyone advertised so I figured I'd get some free or cheap exposure - bid 10 cents a click just to get my ad placed. Well, give it to Google to be just a tad smarter than me:-)

Two days ago they made my keywords inactive and made me bump most to 50 cent minimum bids. Then tragedy - I started getting some clicks and leads. I actually got 5 leads yesterday and Google only charged me 36 cents per click. Well...they certainly weren't gonna let me get away with that.

Obviously their mega super-brain computer realized I'm advertising for health insurance. For that one keyword I got just a few clicks, (I have 30 different keyword searches) made it inactive and now want $5.00 per click! Basically, they charged me 36 cents per click for people clicking to get health quotes when their system knows they're getting $5.00+ per click from people advertising health insurance.

I emailed them yesterday and actually get a pretty prompt response; they want what I'm selling to be part of my keywords - ie; I need to put "health insurance" in my keywords. Oddly they've only targeted just that one city search and the rest of my campaign is fine.....for now. I'm guessing that within a few days Google will be demanding $5.00 per click for all of them, which is the going rate for "health insurance" keyword search. Oh well, I tried to be sneaky.



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