Google Adwords Conversion Optimizer Sucks

I’m running a few Google Adwords campaigns but I must admit I’m not doing it properly. I’m too lazy to do proper follow-ups, check what new keywords are hot etc. So being lazy I’ve been running the Budget Optimizer for a long time. The Budget Optimizer lets you set a monthly budget and is then supposed to use its intelligence to bid on keywords to maximize the number of clicks you get each month.

Being even more lazy I switched to the Conversion Optimizer without following up how it was performing. This was about a year ago. Early this month I finally did the follow up – simply comparing the number of clicks, cost and conversions to before. The result – about 30-50% less clicks and conversions than before. Cost – the same.

Confirming this I changed back to the Budget Optimizer on April 10. As you can see on the graph I had one day of “down time” and after that conversions and clicks raised at the same cost.

In all fairness I also did another change, on April 7 I turned on show in Search Networks, which seems it had some effect also but mainly on that same day. Conspiracy theory: Did the Conversion Optimizer then quickly learn and brought down my conversions again the next day? 😉

I’m sure there are a lot of settings and tweaking you can do to improve the numbers I have been getting. But again I have been too lazy to find out. But then again Google market these tools – Budget Optimizer and Conversion Optimizer – as tools for people like me, who are too lazy to follow-up and do their own keyword bidding.

Next on my todo list is to follow up on how good the Budget optimizer actually is compared to manual bidding…