Google Has Given Me An Account Rep - Advise Needed

windjc

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Sep 24, 2008
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I recently opened a new account for a new product and out of the blue Google contacted me and asked me if I would like to have a dedicated account rep.

I'm still a little shocked.

For those of you with account reps, have you found them useful in managing campaigns, etc?

I am so used to NEVER getting any customer service help from Google that now that I have it I have no idea how I should use it.

For instance, should I think of my account rep as someone to help me if there is a problem down the road, or should I look at them as someone whose advise I should take regarding setting up and running the campaign?

Any personal experiences much appreciated.
 


I've been assigned a few reps. All of them Indians, all of them no better than a bot. Not only that but when they get assigned my accounts get closed.
 
I've been assigned a few reps. All of them Indians, all of them no better than a bot. Not only that but when they get assigned my accounts get closed.

Your accounts get closed? That makes no sense. Why would they offer you an account rep for a campaign against TOS?
 
I guess I was doing well enough with Adsense to get assigned a rep to help me optimize my sites. I was kind of excited at first, thinking he might give me a few secrets to help me make some extra $$. Wrong. The told me to change some colors and placements (wow, that's forward thinking) and my earnings went down. I switched everything back and earnings went back to normal. When he came back a few weeks later with more suggestions I kindly told him that I was making less with his suggestions so I would just do it on my own again. Didn't hear from anyone at G after that.

I mean if they're going to go to the effort to assign you an account rep, shouldn't it be to help you (and Google) make more money. Yeah, it's cool and all to say, Hey I've got my own account guy, but if they can't do anything to help you earn more, what's the point.
 
I guess I was doing well enough with Adsense to get assigned a rep to help me optimize my sites. I was kind of excited at first, thinking he might give me a few secrets to help me make some extra $$. Wrong. The told me to change some colors and placements (wow, that's forward thinking) and my earnings went down. I switched everything back and earnings went back to normal. When he came back a few weeks later with more suggestions I kindly told him that I was making less with his suggestions so I would just do it on my own again. Didn't hear from anyone at G after that.

I mean if they're going to go to the effort to assign you an account rep, shouldn't it be to help you (and Google) make more money. Yeah, it's cool and all to say, Hey I've got my own account guy, but if they can't do anything to help you earn more, what's the point.

Well this is an adwords account rep, but your point is taken.

The only way to find out if my account rep is worth a damn is to see what he brings to the table.

At least having a point of contact will be good.
 
Your accounts get closed? That makes no sense. Why would they offer you an account rep for a campaign against TOS?

Adwords account reps and the quality review reps are from two different depts. The latest adwords ban sweep over the last year saw many with a dedicated rep get banned. A manual review decides whether you get the axe or not.

Just because you have an account rep doesn't mean you are compliant.
 
I got an Account Rep assigned (not asked) in June 2009. They manually slapped all my running campaigns, then disabled every campaign I created from that point on, even when the new campaigns and LP's abided by the "guidelines" they were giving me for the previous slaps. I stopped using Google in August 2009.
 
I got an Account Rep assigned (not asked) in June 2009. They manually slapped all my running campaigns, then disabled every campaign I created from that point on, even when the new campaigns and LP's abided by the "guidelines" they were giving me for the previous slaps. I stopped using Google in August 2009.

Were your campaigns running as an affiliate or as a product owner? I have a love/hate relationship with stories like yours. I love to hear about shit like this (which sadly, never surprises me anymore) so I can be on guard, but I hate it because it makes my butt clench the rest of the day.

The less I deal with Google (and it's getting less and less as time goes by) the better I feel 99% of the time. If it weren't for Adwords, G SEO (incl. webmaster tools), and two personal email accounts, I'd be totally free from those bastards.
 
Were your campaigns running as an affiliate or as a product owner? I have a love/hate relationship with stories like yours. I love to hear about shit like this (which sadly, never surprises me anymore) so I can be on guard, but I hate it because it makes my butt clench the rest of the day.

The less I deal with Google (and it's getting less and less as time goes by) the better I feel 99% of the time. If it weren't for Adwords, G SEO (incl. webmaster tools), and two personal email accounts, I'd be totally free from those bastards.

They were legitimate websites and self-owned products that abided by all published Google webmaster and adwords guidelines.
 
I've has google account reps come in and create a bunch of new adgroups that all pretty much sucked, and i never turned them on.
 
Not a lot of glowing endorsements for Google reps on these parts.

I will proceed with caution.

Its amazing that reps for a company wouldn't know how to run a good campaign on their own system.

Well, not amazing, just ridiculous.
 
Not a lot of glowing endorsements for Google reps on these parts.

I will proceed with caution.

Its amazing that reps for a company wouldn't know how to run a good campaign on their own system.

Well, not amazing, just ridiculous.

Google is like the Cash Cow. If you know how to run a good campaign. You can be pretty damn sure you won't need to work anymore. Not with Google. Not with any other company.

These account reps are people with basic training of the functionality of the Adwords backend system. They will tell you this and tell you that - often things that you already know.

It's good you've got a rep. Just don't get too friendly with him. Listen to what he has to say, but use your own brains when it comes to implementing all of it.
 
Back when we managed client campaigns they gave us an account team. For the most part they had really good strategies for us and were very beneficial. If we ever had a problem or something was declined they were often able to fix it right away.

They helped setup some testing and we let them "optimize" a few campaigns, but we definitely stayed in control and didn't let them run it.

Overall it was worth it.
 
Doesn't having a rep mean that they're paying extra close attention to you? I'd kindly tell them I'm not interested if that happened ~

But then again if you have a legit product it doesn't really matter.
 
My rep is always trying to optimize my account. I usually tell them politely im not interested but once decided to let them have a go. They doubled the cost of my conversion by putting all my cpc up. I think they are on commission for getting you to spend more.
 
So for my day job I work for a paid search ad agency and we have reps with all the engines. If you are running legit stuff they can be very useful. Some things they have helped us with include:


  • Creating campaign builds for us. You'll want to go through these yourself to fine tune but definitely a decent starting point and can save you a ton of time.
  • Getting your ads prioritized for review
  • Helping you figure out mysteries for why things happened in your account
  • Run capping reports to see if there are any ad groups you have that are capping out so you can look at where to increase budget
  • Helping you get started with new tools that are in beta and giving you a heads up about new things coming down the pipeline
  • Keyword expansion
  • Pulling aggregate data from our competitors
  • Pulling together reports for our clients when we're slammed
As an affiliate you'll want to have a non-google conversion tracking tool in place so you don't share any of your conversion data with them (we use DART). Additionally, be really fucking careful about what you tell them.

And as always, remember that your reps job is to get you to spend more with Google which means driving as many clicks as possible. That is not always aligned with your ROI goals. Of course, if you don't know that yet then you have no business advertising on Google in the first place.