I have been a google adwords employer for over three years.  I average $500 a week in pay-per-click advertising.  Although kinda expensive, it has worked for us until recently.

 

I use the Budget optimizer and have set my maximum bid at $1.31.   Yesterday, I checked my Keyword cost per click on several keywords and found to my surprise that Google had charged me up to $1.87 on many clicks.  I sent Google an email to find out what had happened.  They deny any problem.  After reading this email, I went back to check a report that had be emailed last week, and they have all been erased and are now unavailable.  All my reports that would show my costs are gone!!!!!

 

So I log in to look at what my keyword expenses were last week and sure enough, the statistics have been changed through the account management portal.  All my cost-per-clicks are in line with the $1.31 rate. This is totally crazy!!!!

 

 I wasn't seeing things yesterday.  Why would I be saying this?

 

This is a huge problem.  This suggests that overbilling has occured.  And, probably not just with me.  Now that my old records(older than two days ago) have been erased by Google I have no way of determining what has happened.

 

If someone could check their keyword costs against their maximum bid and see if there is any disparity, I would appreciate some emails as to your discoveries.  If you find a problem, don't tell Google yet, or they will erase your records like mine.

 

Please save copies of what you see, because if you tell Google about it, they will erase your reports and put new numbers in them and you won't have a leg to stand on like me.  Or, if you know what I should do, please let me know.

 

What can i do?  This story is totally true, please check your keyword statistics.

 

Thanks,

 

Myron from Atlanta