Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[adwords.google.com...]
i think this is a wonderful step! spammy adsense arbitrage has probably seen its last days, AND: it could mean the end of cheap and worthless ads on publisher's pages.
will be interesting to see how much poor landing pages will factor into the quality score.
adwords advertisers will now have their landing pages factored into the "quality score"
It's frickin' unbelievable to me that Google didn't have this implemented right out of the gate when they started this program. OK, no it isn't. They wanted money from virtually all comers, I get that much. Still, this is good news from a publisher's standpoint. FINALLY, the quality of the advertiser's site will have a bearing on outcomes from our standpoint. Here's to hoping Google boots the spam advertisers so we can have better ads appearing on our real estate.
The folks who have been successfully running on the edge aren't likely to flop down and surrender all that easily.
More likely they'll make the minimum needed adaptations to their landing pages and keep right on going.
Will those changes mean more money for publishers that participate in Adsense? Only time will tell.
- In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user.- Your [sic] should have unique content
- Develop an easily navigable site
we can only hope that google factors these very heavily; if so, the MFA spammers may have just seen their last days.
I think we all would like to see the most relevant ads; not only publishers, but users and other advertisers also.
These days, many mom-n-pop (brick and mortars) are turning to AdWords because their website doesn't do well in the organic SERPS. Why not? Many because they are small businesses and cannot afford the high-cost web design and SEO that it takes to compete with the spammers and MFAs.
So, once again, whose definition of "quality" are we using here? Publishers think quality ads are high-paying clicks. Advertisers think quality ads are their own :-) and users think quality ads are supposed to find the info they are searching for. (IMHO, I think many users would be greatly relieved to find mom-n-pop).
However, remember that mom-n-pop's website isn't considered high-quality by the Google algo, so that is why mom-n-pop are trying to advertise...
Seems to be a vicious circle.
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whose definition of "quality" are we using here? Publishers think quality ads are high-paying clicks.
Not this publisher! Sure, I'd LOVE to get those $1.00 clicks all day long, but my primary concern is giving my visitors alternatives if they don't find what they need in my content and offerings. So, I want relevant ads (top priority) that take visitors to sites that can actually give them what they've been looking for. When that happens more often than not, everybody wins. I get higher CTR from the improved relevance; the visitor gets what he was searching for; the advertiser gets a real shot at a conversion. This is a great move by Google, IF it produces the result they must be hoping for.
FWIW, they're beating up the wrong people as the crappy ADSENSE sites, the MFAs and all the scrapers are the ones needing the boot.
This will just probably hurt publishers in the long run.
Wait and see.
This constant battle to use the URL filter to combat them is a lost cause.
The question now is how timely will they act on complaints and where do we send the complaints? To AW or AS? If we complain to AS will it be passed on to AW?
I have to say that since Dec. 4 my EPC has gone up 20%. I have not had to do any filtering since that date.
If this works even to lessen the load of garbage ads then I say hallelujah as well.
The discussion of it in the AdWords forum has already been put on the WebmasterWorld home page....
Someone had suggested that if a punter clicks on an Ad, does not like what's on the landing page, quickly hits the back-button and then clicks on another ad; Google would probably consider that the publisher site and the traffic it generates is of poor quality. Smart pricing ninjas attack. They do use tracking URLs in the SERP to track user behavior. I would not be surprised if the data so collected from tracking URLs gets fed to their new "landing page quality calculator."
The above sounds logical except for one reason that a few of us had pointed out in that thread. A publisher's site pre-qualifies the traffic; it pre-sells, warms up the buyer and then sends him off to the seller's landing page. I am not taking about MFA sites -I am talking about quality content sites. If the landing page is not done right, or is (MFA) off-target, the buyer is more than likely to bolt by hitting the back button. In this case, it is not publishers' fault that the traffic they generate does not convert well -it is so simply because the landing page sucks.
As a concept, this new Google initiative sounds good to me -both as an advertiser, as well as a publisher. Now how well their "landing page quality gizmo" would gauge the landing page quality quotient is where the rubber meets the road.
Now if Google realised there were limitations to what they can do with algorythms it would be a HUGE step forward.
But as a general comment, I welcome this new development.
One interesting but stark illustration of the limits of artificial intelligence
Ask anyone that is even remotely involved in Natural Language Processing using AI, and (s)he will be quick to cite the following:
Original: The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.
Translated: The wine was good, but the meat was bad.
Kind of like when the new G Gizmo thinks a landing page sucks, and the merchant says : ....but, but, but it converts well...
way too early to draw any firm conclusions, but so far this seems like a great change for legitimate publishers.
Got my fingers crossed that this is going to continue.
I wish I could get a handle on how or if this change is affecting my stats.
But I've got someone running what is almost an ROS (cpm, I think) image ad on my site right now that started at the same time.
For whatever reason my is CTR down, but my eCPM is up. Between the image ads and the Adwords changes, I haven't got a clue what's causing what.
Tropical... if i recall correctly, you are the one that spends prodigous amounts of time adding all the MFAs to the Competitive Ad Filter. its still too early to tell, but google may have just automated the process for you!
I certainly hope so. Blocking the URLs has helped keep my EPC higher but over the last few weeks it's gotten totally out of control. I had filled up the 200 slots and when I tried to remove some they popped back into my pages.
I wrote AS earlier this week pointing out the problem and asking for an increase in the limit of 200 blocked URLS.
This seems to be an automated response to part of the problem.
Gotta luv it!
[edited by: Play_Bach at 7:51 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2005]
Why not just block them?
Tried that, no thanks. I found police-ing my sites for "bad-ads" took FAR too much of my time and wound up hurting the bottom line. Consequently, I don't block anything anymore - the revenue is up, and the stress down.
I feel this is Google's fight and so I'm going to let them deal with it. That I'm not happy with some of the stuff Google allows to be served up to my sites while they get their AdSense "house in order" I rationalize as "just the cost of doing business."
c'est la vie
Most of my sites are high quality niche directories. Most of the landing pages I target with AdWords are category pages. To a human observer they are readily distinguisable from a MFA. To an algorithm they may look the same.
if most visitors click on the back button, then google might use this data along with the rest of the algorithm to decide that your landing page is lousy.
