Wow, when Google AdWords does a quality score min CPC update they do an update.

There are 2 main issues, first the $.50, $5.00, and $10.00 minimum bids, and then the actual change of bids to AdGroups (and keywords??)

There seems to be a common theme to the outrageous minimum bid increases that happened on Google AdWords today. There are lots of really high minimum bids for keywords in your account now.

For keywords that don’t perform in your account (high traffic on Google, but no/low impressions or clicks on your account, landing page?)
Inactive for search
Increase quality or bid $10.00 to activate

For keywords that don’t perform in your account (lower traffic on Google, and no/low impressions or clicks on your account, landing page?)
Inactive for search
Increase quality or bid $5.00 to activate

For keywords that perform so-so in your account (lower traffic on Google, and not too many impressions but decent clickthrough, landing page?)
Inactive for search
Increase quality or bid $0.50 to activate

Next Issue,

It also looks like Google has changed the bid for several AdGroup level bids. I have AdGroups with strange increased bids like $9.56. Now I’m pretty sure I would (or any human) change an AdGroup bid to $9.56. My assumption is that it was changed during the QS update today.

I don’t know if there have been actual changes to bids at the keyword level, but keywords have been set to Inactive status if they do not meet the minimum bids now.

I have heard reports of people paying $5/click for things normally at $0.25. Another example is some branded adgroups costing $1000+/day when they are usually less than $100/day. This could prove costly for a lot of advertisers with “specific” “branded” or “variation” keywords that either perform or don’t.

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