Are you getting what you are paying for on Google Adwords?

I created several new campaigns for a client a couple weeks ago.  I check my conversion rates constantly.  I am finding that Google is charging the account when the click has a 100% bounce rate and ZERO time on the site.

Google Response: A visitor may land on a page, but unless they select to go off the landing page to a second page, it may record the time on the site as ZERO.

Hmmm.  This does not make a lot of sense to me as it appears as though some visitors go to my client’s site and land on the page where I want them.  The time on the site is recorded regardless of whether or not the visitor goes to another page.

I am going to set up a new webpage and not include it in the sitemap or robot.  I will place analytics on the page; click on the page and check to see the results.  I will test this numerous ways. I will go through various search engines and I will type the url directly into the browser.  Each time I will record my actions.

I will post the results here in about a week. 

————-In Google’s defense, I did contact their Adwords dept and received a response stating that if I think that I received the clicks in error, I can request an investigation.  How many people are doing this?  It seems as though this is where other search engines are finding their edge.  They know that Google’s conversion rate is garbage.  That people are still paying for garbage clicks.

I wrote a business plan for a search engine company and have determined at the time of writing the plan that Google knew that their conversions were garbage and were trying to make some changes, but it is clear that they have not gone far enough.  Thanks to Yahoo Analytics, we can keep an eye on our Google conversions.

I am not talking about making a site more engaging to the reader or providing more relative content.

How about simple coding that will reduce the bounce rate of a site?

If we use the simple coding below on text links will it reduce the bounce rate?

<a href=”URL Link” target=”_blank”> <img src=’Image URL’/> </a>

If we take the time to place this on every link (yes extremely time consuming), would it make a difference to bounce rate?  More importantly, will the reduced bounced rate which is more apparent to search engines, than the visitor increase the page rank?

Last night and early this am (we all know how that goes),  I changed the coding on several of the main pages of a newly launched site.  It currently has a PR 0.  Keep in mind that this is a website and not a blog.  It is a niche site, rich in content and has targeted videos.  There is no advertising on the site.

This site was launched in March.  It is a PR 1.  It gets traffic for highly relevant keywords. The market is down for this particular industry, so it is essential that we present ourselves to the market that is looking for the services of our client.  We always put forth the utmost effort, but now it is a matter of their survival. 

• 36 Absolute Unique Visitors
  • 145 Pageviews
  • 3.37 Average Pageviews
  • 00:03:25 Time on Site
  • 53.49% Bounce Rate
  • 76.74% New Visits
  • 43 Visits

    

   

   

We will follow up with this post.

——————–Okay, today is 8/8/09 and the bounce rate for this site has dropped significantly.

We are now at a 33.3% bounce rate.  No other changes to the site and the time on the site is up by FIVE minutes.  Therefore, this site is not a good example for the test.  I will try this again with a stagnant site that gets at least a couple hundred visitors per day. 

Together we will drop our bounce rates!

Use this tool to compare your site to your competitors.

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