Google Adwords has anyone used it?

black-saturn

I'm thinking about advertising my site using Google Adwords. Has anyone used it? Was it any good, did it drum up any business and was it worth the money? Any pitfalls?

All useful replies will be thanked :j

HalfPint

It's good to use, I think lol. My boss uses it and gets a lot of sales by adwords and overture. Word of warning though, be prepared for the cost. It costs him on average £1000 a month:eek: as it "per Click" I'm sure someone with more knowledge on this than me will come on and tell you...I only process the invoice lol

Laura x

payless

I have used it - mainly for a few of my "sidelines" as the finance market is over-crowded on it - and hence expensive.

Recent results have not been as good as they used to be- and costs have increased

Have you searched around... there were some £50 starter vouchers

Astaroth

We spend... well, lets leave it at a lot of money.... you do need to have a serious think about your keywords and times that you want to bid on... look at the search terms that people currently come to your site through as it may be much more cost effective to use a slightly less common but much cheaper term than to go for "cheap insurance" which believe me isnt cheap at all

the_optimist

I was told that you can decide how much you want to spend each day. Once you had clicks reaching that amount, your ad would disappear for the rest of the day.That way you keep control of the costs.

WHA

There is the very real risk of your competitors clicking on your links to use up any limits you place on it and to cost you money. I've had a few clients who have undoubtedly got plenty of sales by using them, but the number of clicks is quite astonishing - one in particular had hundreds of clicks per sale which completely obliterated the profit.

There was a legal class action brought by loads of businesses who'd be stung like this in the US and if I remember rightly, Google (or whoever) had to pay millions
into a pot to compensate.

I think it worked once, but like everything on the web, things move so fast and the con-artists are so quick, that the moment may have passed for them.

Seraphim

WHA wrote:

There is the very real risk of your competitors clicking on your links to use up any limits you place on it and to cost you money.

You get your money back though. Google do have special restrictions in place which picks this up and they will refund you - in my experience, they have been really good with this and refund you really quickly.

Astaroth

This depends on how sophisticated an "attack" your competition launch. If it is your rival home baked cakes company that your neighbor runs and they are just clicking hundreds of times on their home PCs then you will get it back. If they use much more sophisticated methods then it is impossible to show... slightly different but even with the millions we have spent on web security/ human interaction devices we still cannot prevent our competitors/ their agents from hitting our site with hundreds of requests for premiums to try and calculate our rating system.... we know they're doing it (and our agents may well do it to them too but I cant honestly say) but can neither prove it nor prevent it... just a few tell tale signs show up once a week or so and our conversion rate takes a battering on those days.

garyclay

I'm no expert but this is what we have found

We use both adwords(google) and overture (yahoo). Its a great way of dipping a toe into PPC(pay per click) advertising as both can be done on a small outlay.

The only tip I would give is to limit the number of keywords you use.

The reason being is that say you set a monthly budget of £30 and have 40 keywords the money is spread about over those keywords giving you a lower bid price per click. However if you think hard about what separates your business from others you can pick keywords that will ensure people are looking for your particular website.

An example of this is that we are a toy shop and one of our big sellers is the Radio Flyer wagons (those red american pull alongs). If I enter the keyword 'toy' I will have 10000 competitors all bidding on this keyword with much deeper pockets than me. However if I use the keyword 'Radio Flyer' I am competing against 5 competitiors and my 10pence per click then ensures I get listed on page 1.

It also means that the people who come to my site this way are looking for what I actually sell whereas somebody entering 'toy' could be looking for anything!

Hope this helps

chrispyphillips

I had a rubbish experience with them last year. I set up a site, got very excited about it, and put some google adwords on it.

After a month or so, i'd made a few bucks off of it, but Google sent me a mail saying that they had shut the account down and would not pay me any of the money, or even offer an explanation why it was shut! I thought this was proper pathetic, to not even offer an explanation! I went on a few forums and people said the same had happened to them, cos some people constantly click on the same links and get your ad words banned or something. I didnt really get where they were coming from (Americans) and lost faith in it all. Havent touched the web site since (think its gone now) and no further word from Google. I know I didnt click my own ads, was very careful of that, so very unsure what the reason was.

I'm in no way trying to put you off here, or saying thats its a rubbish service, cos I know lots of people that have done well from it, but i'm just explaining my circumstances that left me a bit disheartened!

richt71

chrispyphillips wrote:

I had a rubbish experience with them last year. I set up a site, got very excited about it, and put some google adwords on it.

After a month or so, i'd made a few bucks off of it, but Google sent me a mail saying that they had shut the account down and would not pay me any of the money, or even offer an explanation why it was shut! I thought this was proper pathetic, to not even offer an explanation! I went on a few forums and people said the same had happened to them, cos some people constantly click on the same links and get your ad words banned or something. I didnt really get where they were coming from (Americans) and lost faith in it all. Havent touched the web site since (think its gone now) and no further word from Google. I know I didnt click my own ads, was very careful of that, so very unsure what the reason was.

I'm in no way trying to put you off here, or saying thats its a rubbish service, cos I know lots of people that have done well from it, but i'm just explaining my circumstances that left me a bit disheartened!

I think you're refering to google adsense (where you get paid per click to place google ads on relevant sites). Whereas I believe this thread is about google adwords which is the 'other' side of the coin and means you paying google to have your links and keywords placed on sites.

In terms of adwords. I think it works well but you need to find your keywords and the amount you're willing to pay!