Coming soon: Simplified keyword states and quality-based minimum bids.
In the coming weeks, your keywords will no longer be evaluated as normal, in trial, on hold, or disabled. Instead, your keywords will either be active or inactive, depending on their quality and maximum CPC. Each keyword will be assigned a minimum bid based on its quality. As long as its maximum CPC meets this quality-based minimum bid, your keyword will remain active and trigger ads. Learn more.
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:00 am (utc) on July 15, 2005]
[edit reason] Please don't copy entire pages. See TOS. [/edit]
New keywords will no longer be disabled or have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold. Instead, your keyword will trigger ads as long as it has a high enough Quality Score (determined by your keyword's CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors) and maximum CPC.
Hopefully this will be a published score.
Will advertisers have to potentially go through tens or hundreds of thousands of keywords to see what meets the minimum and what doesn't?
i suspect AWA is going to be busy helping to explain this one to all of us... thanks in advance!
...ok back to rereading again.
I don't think this change is really that confusing. Currently if words are disabled or put on hold because their adrank is too low.
There are only 2 components to adrank, CTR and Bid price. Now instead of disabling or putting on hold low CTR words (quality appears to be a fancy way of saying CTR. When you read low quality, just think low CTR).
In the future, if a keyword is "inactive, the user will be able to reactivate it by raising bid, or running an improved ad. This has to be easier than the current system of having to delete disabled or on hold keywords, and then starting up new ad groups to use them.
[adwords.blogspot.com...]
I've been in close communication with the Product Managers on this product and I'm happy to let them clarify a few points. Here are their comments so far, in the "quote" boxes:
All of the changes that we will be making are in response to feedback that we have received from our advertisers. Our goal was to simplify our keyword states and give advertisers more control.To answer one of your questions, the Quality Score, which determines your minimum bid, is a new name for the predicted clickthrough rate which we have used in the past. The Quality Score, like the predicted clickthrough rate, is determined based on the CTR of your keyword, the relevance of your ad text, the historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.
To eWhipser's point, this is not a "number" that will be shown in the UI. However, there is a direct, but inverse, relationship between the Quality Score and the minimum bid for your keyword which will give you a good idea of your Quality Score. Keywords that have a high Quality Score will have a minimum bid as low as USD $0.01. Keywords with a low Quality Score will have higher minimum bids, but the majority of keywords should not see an increase in the minimum bid required to show on Google (currently USD $0.05).
The minimum bid is dynamic and will change based on the Quality Score (calculated using the CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors).
As in our current system, the minimum bid does not impact your position. It is simply the threshold that must be met in order for your ads to be eligible to run on the Google Network. Now your keywords will run as long as the maximum CPC meets the minimum bid, giving you control to run on the keywords that you find valuable.
Eurydice asks: "So how would I know the required minimum CPC? Will the console tell me that for each KW, or do I just have to increase the KW's CPC until it goes out of Hold status? Just curious about this."
The keyword states, active and inactive, will replace the current keyword states in the UI. If your keyword is inactive, we will list the minimum bid required to run underneath this keyword. You will also be able to pull reports to view the minimum bids for all of your keywords.
I hope that this answers some of the initial questions that have come up, and I'll be watching this thread closely and jumping it to clarify wherever I can.
Actually folks, I think you're going to like this. ;)
AWA
How Google measures it? - is it just the AD CTR or a score is assigned manually when the ad is approved
in other words, is it possible we will have to raise all our max CPCs in the new system just to keep running ads that are currently running under the old system?
regards,
-Gee
I don't think this change is really that confusing. Currently if words are disabled or put on hold because their adrank is too low.There are only 2 components to adrank, CTR and Bid price. Now instead of disabling or putting on hold low CTR words (quality appears to be a fancy way of saying CTR. When you read low quality, just think low CTR).
In the future, if a keyword is "inactive, the user will be able to reactivate it by raising bid, or running an improved ad. This has to be easier than the current system of having to delete disabled or on hold keywords, and then starting up new ad groups to use them.
Actually, that is a pretty nice summary, jim2003. Didn't see it before writing my other post. ;)
AWA
And consider this bombshell, from the Product Manager in AWA's post:
"Keywords that have a high Quality Score will have a minimum bid as low as USD $0.01"
That's what I'm going to focus on! Give me some of that 1 cent traffic.
It is simply the threshold that must be met in order for your ads to be eligible to run on the Google Network. Now your keywords will run as long as the maximum CPC meets the minimum bid, giving you control to run on the keywords that you find valuable
thanks for the update AWA... it seems that one disadvantage of this is that the "threshold that must be met" is a moving target. right now, if we bid 5 cents on a keyword, then our ad is displayed, the only uncertainty is the position of the ad - with the new system, if you bid 5 cents and your quality score drops below the threshhold, it means that your ad will not be displayed.
i interpret this to mean that we will have to either:
a) monitor our accounts a little more to make sure that ads are active, or
b) bid a little higher than the suggested minimum bid to make sure that you dont fall below the threshold.
i sure hope that there will be a way to find all the inactive ads in the keyword tool once the new system rolls out.
I have the same question too
calculated using the CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors
i wonder if "other relevancy factors" also includes relevancy of the landing page (destination URL).
Is there any chance that Google will make it easier to post more targeted ads more quickly, like a speadsheet upload with a 1-1 relationship between the ad and the creative?
One likely question on many peoples' minds is going to be how much more (less?) it's likely to cost. Is there anything more specific you can say as to what advertisers might expect when this gets implemented?
If your keywords typically get a CTR of xx, you probably won't see much change?
Any info that could be provided so as to be able anticipate in advance what kind of resources should be in place to keep everything seemlingly "normal" to clients would be very helpful.
For anyone who manages tons of AdWords accounts, this seems like it could have quite a large impact.
[edited by: skibum at 2:16 am (utc) on July 15, 2005]
That's what I'm going to focus on! Give me some of that 1 cent traffic
welcome to webmasterworld, one_thing_well!
keep in mind, that to get 1 cent traffic, your CTR is going to have to be VERY high; an advertiser who keeps her bid at 5 cents is going to probably be positioned higher than you, which means that maintaining your high CTR is going to be difficult.
I'm very happy to see Adwords disabling The Four Horsemen of the Adpocolypse: Normal, OnHold, InTrial, & Disabled. While it did seem to eventually sort itself out, I did feel penalized for the irrelevance of other campaigns run before I had begun my campaign.
Here's what I like about the new system (if it turns out as publicized).
1. Accounts will no longer be slowed. Good. Let me "fail fast" and move on. Also, I was never sure if by "account will be slowed" meant the Ad Group, the Campaign or the entire actual Account.
2. No more .5% Minimum CTR requirement. This doesn't look good upon first inspection. Someone can spend "stupid money" and take up the first page for virtually anything they are willing to pay for and NEVER GET A CLICK. I hope Google makes $100 per click off of them and they go away. Hopefully, Adwortisers won't be willing to do this but potentially, the entire first page of Ads could be from those willing to lose money.
3. The Quality Score is the next generation of CTR. It includes but is not limited to CTR. Here's what Google says: "Quality Score (determined by your keyword's CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors)." This further darkens the opacity of the Black Box of Adwords Relevance. As a specialist, this is probably good news for me. For the do-it-yourself Adwortiser, this means more difficulty in understanding what's going on even if the ease of being successful stays about the same.
4. Google suggests visiting the Optimization Tips page. I already did and will continue to post on the recommendations.
which means that maintaining your high CTR is going to be difficult
Google has stated that it normalizes CTR for position. The look at where the ad is in relation to CTR, not just CTR. i.e. two ads in the #1 & #2 spot with the same actual CTR, the one in the #2 spot would be considered to have a higher CTR. At least that is what the G engineer told me at the PubCon G event.
I would imagine that carries over to this. My question is:
If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads
You can move an inactive keyword to an active state and show ads by (1) improving its Quality Score through optimization, or (2) increasing its maximum CPC to the minimum bid recommended by the system.
So how does one improve the quality score for KWs on an ad if isn't shown? No ad, no CTR means no improvement. Which means that the only way to "improve" a keyword is to up the bid.
HALI-FRIEKEN-LLUYAA!
I guess time will tell but this is what I wanted a long time ago...
.... and today I did a major purge of in-trial/on hold/ disabled keywords....... goood thing I did a backup...
This added will all the other new stuff that is happening should make for an interesting time.
Crap! I'm going fishing in Alaska the last week of July and will have limited net access...... that should be fun..... I could come home happy or very poor if my account does frieky things....
It's all a game is what I say....
heyday
My guess, is that including the keyword in lines 2 or 3 gets you points, including it in the headline gets you more points, and including it in BOTH parts gets you max points, as far as wording goes.
The minimum bid is dynamic and will change based on the Quality Score (calculated using the CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors).
Might be time for Google to give more info about 'relevance of ad text' and what that means if it's used to determine quality score.
but anyway, what i really wanted to say was, thank you google for giving us warning. thank you very much. it is much apreciated.
-Dr.X
... your keywords will no longer be evaluated as normal, in trial, on hold, or disabled.
Just Hallelujah!
... keep in mind, that to get 1 cent traffic, your CTR is going to have to be VERY high;
I have some 0.05 USD / 19% CTR KWs and it will be great to pay 0.01 for them :-)
Has this system been well field tested?
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Right now when I run the keyword estimator tool, it suggests $2.82 cents for a keyword that I know darn well won't take more than a dime to maintain a healthy, profitable second place. This happens constantly!
Will similar logic be used? Will similarly strange anomolies abound in the rating system?
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Will this take ad position into consideration?
I don't always strive to be #1. If a keyword consistently shows 4 ads, I do quite well at the bottom of the column vs. the middle or the top. I guess I'm asking will the rate be staggered based on positioning?
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I've been either lucky or reasonably savvy up until now. Few keywords disabled or on hold out of a 50k list and never have been "slowed". If the attainable keyword pool suddenly means most of my keywords cannot be shown at a rate that generates acceptable ROI, then you'll have another unhappy advertiser and unhappy customers who seem to like me :)
Up until now, generally I've been able to use a single bid per AdGroup. The obscure words always came in at a nickel while the more popular ones used the max CPC or near. If we have to hone AdGroups Max CPCs at the keyword level, advertisers will have to spend much more time and system I/O maneuvering bids and your allegedly already taxed system will be burdened even more so.
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You can move an inactive keyword to an active state and show ads by (1) improving its Quality Score through optimization, or (2) increasing its maximum CPC to the minimum bid recommended by the system.
Option 1 is obviously preferable to option 2.
Now as Hammerluv points out, you won't know if you can show unless you raise your bid. I doubt the max CPC will adjust based on immediate changes to the creative, especially if the ad score is another "secret".
Will any new keyword/creative optimization guidelines be offered?
I don't see any specifics pointed out on the notification page that aren't strictly common sense.
Pre-implementation real world examples of how typical accounts might be affected would be vastly preferable to the usual major change scenario. A 30 page thread will contain the laments of advertisers suddenly taken down by mysterious surprises.
I'm picturing nickel bids that worked forever suddenly becoming 50 cent mininums and no one able to shed any light on the why.
Why not work out the kinks with the involuntary regional CPCs first? Last I've read here the fix has been relegated to advertisers using workarounds.
Why not wait until the week after Thanksgiving to implement it -- :)
This just doesn't feel right already. Remember the "On Hold/On Trial" nightmare. That was well intentioned too, designed to forestall the immediate drop to "Disabled".
patient2all
end Rant
-With the new approach, could any Active keyword be required a higher bid to be re-enabled?
-Will existing keywords have any advantage over new keywords in the min bid?
And... Could I say that Google will allow lower quality, lower relevance ads in searches if the advertiser pays more? With the risk of users seeing more unrelated ads and ignoring all ads a little bit more?
