1

We outsource the management of our Google AdWords account.

Although we understand the interface ourselves, we just don't have the time to manage it, and thought we might also benefit from a pro's added experience.

However, looking at the My Change History page, the only changes I see are '1 Max CPC changed' on each Ad Group - almost always at the same time every day.

Are there any tools available that automate minor changes like this?

Can I tell if they are ever manually logging in and making real changes?

Brock Adams
  • 90,639
  • 22
  • 233
  • 295
watermanio
  • 235
  • 1
  • 11

4 Answers4

2

It is possible to build a script that logs into Google Analytics and makes some changes automatically.

It could, of course, just as well be somebody actually logging in, doing some analysis, and adjusting the CPC limit according to that analysis. If the time is really the same, down to the minute, every day, that is hard to believe, though.

There is no way for you to find out whether it was a change made by a bot, or a human.

Maybe you should talk to them, and ask them what they actually do for you, and to ask them for some examples what analysis the adjustments they make are based on.

Pekka
  • 442,112
  • 142
  • 972
  • 1,088
2

You can actually even automate this using the AdWords interface itself - it's under the "Automate" menu in the web interface. Using automation you can make changes to many things (including Max CPC) based on a trigger event. This can be run on a schedule of your choosing.

There's much more to AdWords than adjusting Max CPC. I'd suggest trying to find a single consultant to manage your account. They are likely to have fewer processes in place (no sales team for sure) so most of your spend is going to their time, which in turn goes to managing the account.

Tim Hackbarth
  • 21
  • 2
1

if all they are doing is managing bids then they're being lazy, changing the cpc should ideally be just to maintain a position preference, what they should be focussing on is increasing the quality score, this way, once you hit scores of 7 you'll be paying what google deem is the right cost per click for that keyword, anything below a 7 incurs a penalty fee, so for example a quality score of 1 would cost around 600% more per click than the same keyword if it were running at a score of 7, if it were at a 10 it would be around 30% less than the 7, so raising the quality score is far more important than merely managing the cost per click.

Just managing cpc's like handing out asprin for a brain tumour, it may dull the pain and treat the symptoms but the damage is still being done behind the scenes and different action needs taking to cure it.

if an agency or consultant is talking more about managing bids than they are about splitting down accounts into targeted adgroups and increasing the quality score then find someone else to talk give your ppc management to.

shane
  • 11
  • 1
0

If all you see is bid changes that happen once a day, there is no doubt that some automation is in place. It could be an auto-bidding tool (such as Wordwatch), the "automate" feature of AdWords UI or an AdWords script (based on JS).

Now, if you let me broaden the scope of the answer, if I were a Client I would look out for the performance of the account according to my KPIs. I would not care about how many changes the consultant makes or what tools he use. This comment is also directed to one answer above mentioning QS. Indeed QS is important but is just a lever to reach to the desired outcome. And it is not the only one.

But in this case, doing only bid changes will surely lead to sub-optimal performance. You cannot excel on AdWords without adding negative keywords, adjusting AdTexts and keep making your AdGroups more granular.

Gerasimos Nikolopoulos
  • 1