Jchudleigh - 5:03 am on Jan 12, 2011 (gmt 0)

Also, on the down with Google side of the argument:I think that since the advent of QS users have been paying closer attention to their keywords average CPC vs position and working with bids more to attain the traffic levels they want - great that users are more involved with their advertising, BUT - this closer attention has meant that users have become more competitive and will push up bids more in the past to attain certain positions.

Also, on a related but slightly different note, in my personal experience it seems that the landing page has a great deal to do with QS - just as much if not more so than the CTR - this can be seen when starting new ad groups and the opening QS that Google gives you - if my pages title, URL and meta tags match closely with the keywords and ads then the QS will start at 7, if not then 3 and even if a high CTR follows it is a nightmare to raise that 3 to above a 5.
What are others experiences and ideas on how much of a contributory factor landing page plays?