Google’s “New” AdWords Algorithm
*** Updated***
Here is a look at the Quality Score indicators now showing in the AdWords panel. Looks like a “Poor” Quality Score can really put a hurting to you.
Honestly I am not too sure how helpful these are going to be in the big picture but it is interesting to see how Google feels about your ads. Some testing is in order…
Oh yea, and you can now pause keywords, sites, and ad creatives! This I like!
**End Updated**
Well it looks like Google is taking a cue from Yahoo! for once – or should I say once again. Google AdWords will be shortly releasing some more features for advertisers using their product, a column for “ad quality” determination. In an effort to create transparency there will be a new Quality Score column telling you whether Google believes your ad copies to be either “Great, OK, or Poor.” Simple as 1, 2, 3. I see this as a response to the Yahoo! Sponsored Panama update feature which ranks ad quality on a scale of 1 to 5 and shows this to it’s users. A feature I appreciate. Once again Google maintains it’s obfuscating modus operandi by reducing a scale of 1-5 to one of 1-3 which in turn makes reverse engineering the quality factors that much more difficult. Apparently this will accompany a change in how the ads will be judged thereby effecting minimum bid costs and it’s progeny by way of position preference, click through rate, and average cost per click.
Google is taking the next steps to improve the relevance of their over-all search results which is good for searchers but that much more tough on advertisers and as far as I see as an attempt to put a damper on those playing the CPC arbitrage game.
It’s turning out to be a labor intensive year in the field of paid search, not that it wasn’t before.
No tags for this post.3 Comments
Submit a Comment
Improved Landing Pages, does not affect bid price???
After several of my campaigns were deemed “low quality” I took the time to follow each suggestion provided in the optimization / landing page guide and have now been waiting more than 60 days to see any affect on my bid prices for these websites. Nothing has changed. When I contact AdWords support, I am told that there is nothing a “real” person can do, because the landing page quality score is determined by Google’s bots / spiders. It seems to me, that if you are going to tell folks that if they spend the time, energy and money to make improvements to their websites, those efforts should be rewarded in a timely way. In my opinion Google should consider giving its human employees the ability to manually update an advertisers Quality Score. Maybe the “new and improved” bot brains will work better and faster? We shall see. In the meantime, many legitimate businesses with products to sell and families to feed are suffering.
I am wholeheartedly inclined to agree with you. The same goes for those of us representing clients. As diligent Google AdWords Certified individuals we stay up to date with the latest news and recommendations coming from Google, we then pass those recommendations along to our clients who expect to see results for the extra time and money spent to implement. When, and if, it doesn’t happen it can make the marketing agency look bad as well as the Google AdWords program in general. That’s just bad business.
Does Google hold itself accountable for it’s professed “advances and improvements”?
Right now it doesn’t look like it.
once again content is the king, but free stuff great content would be a great traffic magnet.