Okay, I have always had a healthy skepticism of Google, especially relating to AdWords. I set all my campaigns to rotate ads instead of optimize. One reason is to test more accurately and the other is simple suspicion that Google is really just optimizing their bottom line, not my results. And lest you attribute my suspicion to mere paranoia, I submit the following evidence:
Exhibit A
These stats were taken from a client’s account yesterday and covers the month of April. Keep in mind that this campaign is set to rotate ads evenly. A screenshot is not provided to protect privacy.
- Ad #1 – Served 68% of the time with a 1.45% CTR
- Ad #2 – Served 32% of the time with a 1.32% CTR
Obviously Google is serving Ad #1 more frequently to help me get more clicks. Any idiot can see it gets a better CTR. However…
- Ad #1 – Receives a 4.01% conversion rate at a $7.48 cost/conversion
- Ad #2 – Receives a 6.37% conversion rate at a $4.85 cost/conversion
Now we see Google’s true colors. They aren’t optimizing to help me, they’re optimizing to help themselves and I have a hard time believing that Google’s engineers can’t program the ad optimization algorithm (which technically shouldn’t be messing with this ad group because it is set to rotate) to have conversion statistics override click-through rates.
So there you have it judge. I rest my case.
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