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==> TOPIC: AdWords Quality Score Update
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Originally posted in SR #106
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061110-085425
Essentials: The latest revision of the Google AdWords Page Quality Score factor for your ads has a number of advertisers upset about price increases. The history of price and PPC goes way back to when GoTo originally instigated a $0.05 minimum bid, up from just a $0.01 as they started. Advertisers were angry then and thought GoTo was making a mistake.
Fast forward several years. GoTo is now Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google has innovated on the idea of minimum bids forcing advertisers to increase their bids against a mystery Quality Score. It's no secret that what Google hides from advertisers is easily explained as protection of an industry secret, but it also gives Google the ability to adjust their service to hit quarterly earnings if they should desire to do so.
The point of bringing up GoTo is that this is nothing new, and advertisers should expect that search advertising is to be adjusted upwards until it reaches a price saturation point. Once adding dollars makes no difference and just costs money, Google and the other search engines that sell advertising will not rest on their laurels content. They will look for more revenue. All public companies need to learn to satiate the ravenous WallStreet appetite for profits.
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==> TOPIC: MSN ContentAds Pilot
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #087
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://www.jensense.com/archives/2006/08/msn_adcenter_in.html
Essentials: Microsoft has invited a select group of advertisers into a pilot for serving text ads initially on Microsoft owned properties MSN Money and Real Estate. This is the first indication that the software giant is planning a full contextual advertising network as its rival in search (Google) has.
Yahoo! Publisher Network has been in pilot for nearly a year. Coming so soon after the launch of AdCenter, the move by Microsoft may reveal that the software maker is short on search inventory to sell.
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==> TOPIC: Page Quality Score
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #078
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060714-083818
Essentials: Recently Google declared a Page Quality Score in the Adwords platform that would add a factor for ad rankings. Google calculates ad ranking by bid amount, click-thru rate and now the inherent quality of the landing page as determined by Google. The result of this has shown to be higher prices for some advertisers particularly those of an affiliate nature.
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==> TOPIC: AdWords Quality Score
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #076
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060707-232523
Essentials: Watch for changes this week to the cost of Google AdWords as a result of Page Quality Score adjustments. It can be assumed that Google has long calculated user experience factors into their ranking algorithms for natural results, and has recently extended these calculations to include AdWords ranking. Jen does a great job explaining how some sites will likely be adversely affected by these changes, and we can provide an additional tip or two here.
Pages with excessive text is not easily consumable. Too high a word count may count against your user experience score. A 5,000 word document would be hard to read on any machine's screen. Tiny text is also difficult to read, and choosing colors other than black text against white bckground is inadvisable.
Pages with a high link count are easy for a machines to spot, and can be assumed to be low-quality in terms of measuring user experience. Each link on a page confronts users with a choice. If your link count is abnormally high, you are overwhelming users. Google has inferred in its guidelines that more than 100 links on a page might be excessive (although that number should not be considered a hard-fast rule, consider a reasonable threshold).
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==> TOPIC: Ad Conversion Metrics
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #075
"A tabulated interface at the AdGroup level provides users with access to the Summary, Keywords and AdVariations screens which have all mostly been redesigned.""
From: Chris Nielsen <christian@nielsentech.com>
I just wanted to comment that while Google has added the tabbed interface, the most important aspect is the fact that the conversion information is now right there with the ads. Previously you would have to run a report the get ad conversion numbers, while that has always been part of the keywords information.
I had been asking to have this for over a year and it is so great to finally have that.
Thanks,
Chris Nielsen
www.DomainIncubation.com
Moderator Comment: There is no doubt this is important and excellent catch by Chris. Google has long favored ads with higher CTR and more recently ad quality score. This has driven advertisers, (and especially agencies), to write copy for CTR and that can be off-target for conversion. Pre-qualifying clicks for conversion was more an afterthought under those circumstances, even though conversions are ultimately the most important aspect to search advertising.
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==> TOPIC: Alert Services On AdWords Pricing And Activity
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #067
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060529-131129
Essentials: New alert services will email reports on the highest earning keywords, useful to AdSense publishers, and email alerts to advertisers when new ads appear for keywords.
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==> TOPIC: AdWords Quality Affect
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #058
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/04/ads-quality-and-you.html
Essentials: Starting today, Google will be implementing an expanded and contracted ad publishing quality affect designed to show fewer ads on queries for which users might prefer not to see them. Google will show a wide selection of ads for queries such as [car insurance] or [flowers] when possible. For queries detected as having more information gathering intent, Google will show fewer ads.
If you watch your keyword performance closely, you should notice changes over the next few weeks. The impact of this change will vary from advertiser to advertiser. A reduction of impressions on information gathering queries may increase CTR and your AdRank would improve in that case. The opposite can be true if you experience fewer clicks when your impressions decline in number.
Tip provided: If you notice a decline in impressions or clicks on keywords, ensure that your most important terms are specifically entered as keywords rather than relying on broad or phrase match. If you notice an unwanted increase in impressions or clicks for keywords, negative keywords can finely tune your targeting.
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==> TOPIC: Exposed Conversion Value Parameter
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #055
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060417-123032
Essentials: Placing values in parameters of url strings is a very common tracking method for populating data destined for reports. This is no exception with Google. When you select to calculate conversion value with AdWords Conversion Tracker, the values you assign appear completely exposed. It is very simple for a curious competitor to go through your conversion process, and to capture urls with your sensitive information. It is made simple given the fact the assigned parameter name is: value.
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==> TOPIC: New AdWords API Fees
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #054
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060412-100340
Essentials: Google is commercialising the AdWords API. Use of the API remains free until July 1 2006, after which companies that produce commercial products for AdWords management will pay a $0.25 fee for each block of 1,000 actions.
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==> TOPIC: Click Fraud Woes
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Originally posted in SearchReturn #053
New Discussion
From: SearchReturn <digest@searchreturn.com>
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6059181.html
Essentials: Click Fraud has been in headlines in a number of major newspapers, including a story in The Wall Street Journal. The search engines have done an excellent job minimizing the issue while advertisers are generally unprepared. This recent story has does a good job of highlighting the problem again, with quotes from several industry professionals and the search engines Google and Yahoo!.
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