Google Ads can be a toilet for your money. Particularly when an odd news story matches your target keywords.
I've been running Google search ads for years. During this time, I've added thousands of negative keywords, which tell Google what searches not to show your ad for.
Our site, LanguaTalk, targets the keyword "Spanish tutor Zoom".
I noticed a big spike in clicks on May 8th, with $184 spent on this keyword alone. I thought it'd be a bot, and was ready to contact Google.
I saw that all the searches were for 'nyc Spanish tutor zoom'. So I put this into Google. Unfortunately, for us, on May 8th, a news story went viral: a Spanish tutor in a school had decided to lick a man's nipples during her Zoom class.🙄
Google Ads is getting more expensive every year, with VC-backed businesses paying anything to get clicks, when they're clearly losing money.
This was just another reminder of how hard it is to avoid wasted spend on Google Ads. We're currently working on content, SEO and partnerships as these channels tend to be more profitable and scalable.
Thanks very much for the reminder, naughty Spanish tutor.
I fail to understand why you don't have a daily budget limit, so that stuff like this doesn't happen.
We use shared budgets across campaigns. They can't prevent your spend being used up on the wrong searches due to freak events. We could move campaigns out of shared budgets but this has its own disadvantages.
I see... Your campaigns must be much more complex than mine :)
Do you have daily budgets/weekly/monthly?
Possibly...we have thousands of keywords. Even if your budget is low enough to limit the impact somewhat, if the clicks come in fast, Google will allow your spend to go over your budget anyway. And to answer your question, we have daily budgets.
Yeah that makes sense. It's certainly good to know, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing your story.
Something similar happened to me, but I was on the other end. About 10 years ago I wanted to start a blog to write about 3d technology, devices, movies, etc. I brough the domain believe3d. Posted few articles and let it float, when, suddenly, got a lot of traffic, about 1000 visitors a day. Searched on Google and I learned that there is a movie rolling out, featuring Justin Bieber, called Believe. Because it was in 3d, everyone called it Believe 3d, landing on my blog after searching for it. Earned few hundred dollars from the experience, but that was it.
😄way better than my story. You should have flipped the site to sell overpriced merch to Beliebers.
Thanks for you sharing, I am considering whether I need to buy google Ads. It seems not so good from your experience