Google has announced the upcoming release of new quality score “improvements” to the AdWords system. There are three key aspects that will effect PPC advertisers…

The Quality Score will now be calculated in real time. This seems to mean that if your ad is performing particularly well in a given day, it will it be given a higher quality score resulting in better placement. This should be very interesting to see how it will effect current campaigns and what adjustments will need to be made.

Keywords will no longer be “inactive for search.” In the past, if a keyword was not performing well, you would be forced to increase your bids. But, this will no longer be the case. Now, they will always be active. But, since they have a poor quality score, they likely will not generate much traffic.

I would be very cautious with this, however, as there is the chance that you will begin to receive a spike in traffic from these types of keywords. Make sure you check to see what keywords are in your ad groups that are “inactive” and make sure you want them to be active or else it’s better to delete or pause them.

“Minimum bid” is being replaced with “first page bid.” The minimum bid is no longer going to be necessary and so instead, it is being replaced with first page bid, which allows you to see how much you need to bid in order for your ads to be shown on the first page.

Of course, all these changes are being made for two reasons. One, they intend to push ads that perform well towards the top of the rankings, resulting in more relevant ads for searchers. Secondly, it’s intended to make Google more money.

That is, at the end of the day, the main reason why they make change. But, in order for Google to make more money, they need to keep advertisers shelling out money. And to do that, they need to stay ahead of Yahoo and Microsoft by providing advertisers with the most advanced paid search platform - that when managed correctly - delivers a great return on their advertising dollars.

Filed under: PPC on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 by Nate Linnell |
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.