The issue I would like for you to address is of course is the radical rise in the minim bid costs that many of us are seeing. To get at this problem, I spoke to one rep on the phone today as my personal rep is “unavailable” and has been all day. I sent a lengthy email to support early this morning (my rep) and left a voice mail for my rep to contact me immediately. So far the only response I have gotten was from the lower the level rep when I declined to leave another voice mail for my personal rep. She was very apologetic and nice, but didn’t know what was going on. She told me all the reps were told was to expect some changes, but that they were not told what the changes would encompass or whom the changes would affect. She said she had spoken to some customers today that had similar issues, but simply put she doesn’t know what to advise them as she doesn’t know what the new quality system looks for other than the generic stuff from the Google Ad Words page. She looked at my account, and I had her note the same ad had been running in excess of 2 years and had produced a click through rate of 26% in those 2 years, and she agreed it wasn’t really possible to increase the quality the ad itself. She had no idea how often the bot looks at the pages so you can see if changes you make actually improve your quality score.
Your employees have been uninformed and left in the dark about these major changes to your program, and perhaps more importantly your paying customers have been left in the dark as well. The smart thing would have been to come to the community months ago and said hey we are thinking about some major changes, these are how these changes are going to affect you, and here is what you can do to bring your landing pages up to snuff. That way your business partners would not be left holding the bag when they are hit with overnight radical price increases, and are forced to seek immediate answers from your employees who have also been left in the dark, and have no useful information to provide your customers. I would suggest as good business etiquette and professionalism would dictate you roll these changes back immediately and evaluate what you have learned from this. Then come forward and announce what changes you plan to make, describe in detail what accounts it will have a negative impact on, and provide in detail guidelines for producing the type of landing pages that you want. That way your business partners can make a business decision as to if they want to continue to do business with you under the new system.
Sincerely
Mark A. Libbert
Attorney At Law
P.S. If any Overture/Yahoo rep is lurking I have 10-12k a month buy for you.
The other thing is I believe the head honchos got really p*****ed off at how they dreamchild has been abused, and said "Fix it, and I don't care how these slimeballs complain".
Really...so I'm a slimeball now?
Because my legitimate non-Adsense/non-affiliate site got all its bids raised to $10 overnight and my rep told me I should "bid more".
Everyone I know who uses Adwords was hit. That's my market sample, all my friends in the business are seeing this.
And of course, people I know who gain Adsense revenue from their sites are seeing their revenue go down as well as advertisers pull out completely.
Whether Google is extorting their customers in the harshest way or actually wears a halo as some people here claim- they used a shotgun to do the job of a rifle.
Really...so I'm a slimeball now?
I suspect you didn't understand a word of what I said.
But, I have no idea if you are a slimeball or not. What matters is what google thinks, anyway.
They obviously don't want to do business with certain types of people, companies and sites. And based on the messages posted, I can understand how google might take that position. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. But I can understand it. The fact that some of the people here (and some site owners not quite so open) are openly declaring, and congratulating themselves on gaming/cheating the system goes a long way to convincing me that at least for some cases, google made some good moves. Unfortunately, they no doubt also negatively affected honest people who would make good people to do business with.
And they didn't implement very well (yet). But they implemented based on their "prime directives". To understand what's happened, you have to understand those.
What's even more important is that they have the data to know the impact, and that I think the HAVE acted in ways that will protect and increase their revenues in the future.
...despite the wishful thinking of the google haters.
And I add, that I'm no great supporter of google personally, since I've been HUGELY affected by their changes in the organic search areas .
I've been HUGELY affected by their changes in the organic search areas
You obviously own extremely low-quality websites. :)
You mean keep on whining
Let me guess?
You
A. Were unaffected by the changes
B. Don't use Adwords
or
C. Hold Google stock
Either way, it's hard to call people who have lost multimillion dollar spends overnight "whiners" now isn't it?
lost multimillion dollar spends overnight "whiners" now isn't it?
Most of the adwords discussions aren't very useful, but they sure are entertaining.
Guessing that the poster is taking the position that the more money on the line, the more entitled one is to whine and complain, which I suppose has a logic to it.
I figure whining is whining no matter how much money someone has, or spends.
I'm starting an exclusive whining club for the rich.
D. Paid 2c a word to bolster certain corporate egos on public forums.
Not that I think its the case with Fryman, or his message would be longer.
The fact that some of the people here (and some site owners not quite so open) are openly declaring, and congratulating themselves on gaming/cheating the system goes a long way to convincing me that at least for some cases, google made some good moves. Unfortunately, they no doubt also negatively affected honest people who would make good people to do business with.
rbacal, is it conceivable that G's business practices (non-inclusive, lacking transparency & consistency etc.) foster the type of negative behaviour you speak of? Is it not possible that some of those gamers/ cheats, if dealt with in an appropriate manner would turn out to be (or continue to be) "good honest people to do business with"? Why if G's motives are true can they not just say to an advertiser "look mate your site stinks, you need to do this, this and this to meet our minimum requirements. Get back to us when it's sorted"?
I will rebuild my "low quality" sites. I'm fine with that, it's just work and I want to get on. Problem I'm having is the unknown, will my efforts be rewarded, will the changes make any difference, is this all really about quality, do I represent a type of advertiser (affiliate) that Google no longer want to deal with.
Too bad the Google checkout was a big damp squib. The only thing sadder than their checkout is their share price.
[edited by: Woz at 2:10 am (utc) on July 25, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] Tidying up. [/edit] [/edit][/1]
Why if G's motives are true can they not just say to an advertiser "look mate your site stinks, you need to do this, this and this to meet our minimum requirements. Get back to us when it's sorted"?
My guess: Because Google prefers automation to manual reviews for reasons of scalability, consistency, and cost.
(Which isn't to say that automation never delivers inconsistent results. But if that happens, the inconsistency is a bug, not a feature.)
My guess: Because Google prefers automation to manual reviews for reasons of scalability, consistency, and cost.
Fair point, but why must automation and transparency be mutually exclusive.
Fair point, but why must automation and transparency be mutually exclusive.
They aren't. When you leave your home, do you put a note on the door telling people you're out, and where to find the key?
When you leave your home, do you put a note on the door telling people you're out, and where to find the key?
Totally irrelevant.
They aren't. When you leave your home, do you put a note on the door telling people you're out, and where to find the key?
No, but I would pass that information onto an invited guest or expected visitor.
Fair point, but why must automation and transparency be mutually exclusive.
I actually don't know what I was thinking in my previous reply. It's possible, and even likely that they ARE mutually exclusive. TO understand why requires some conceptual mathematics.
Here's an explanation/example.
QS is the quality score used in an if then set of statements that determine min. bid.
Let's say there are 20 variables used to calculate the final value of QS and call them V1-V20. Each of those may also be calculated via complex formulas. So, V1 could be calculated via a dozen other sub-variables.
Now, each of those variables has a weight assigned to it (we'll call those weights W1-W20) that is determined via statistical analysis which I won't go into. Those weights can be negative or positive.
Now, the final formula that yields QS can contain, in addition to the variables, a number of operators (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc) AND we can also have various forms of data transformations (e.g. using logarithms, normalization of stuff).
So, we have a simplified formula that looks hypothetically like this:
QS = V1(W1) + V2(W2) + (V3(W3) X V4(W4)) X (V5 X W5) ....
and so on for all the variables. This is the SIMPLE example.
Ok. So, let's say someone's QS is 30, but that puts the person in a category that requires they bid 10 bucks for a keyword.
The person says: What do I need to change to fix it?
It's simply NOT possible to answer that question, because the math, as applied to a single case is so complex, even when we take a simplied example. The QS is a function of a number of variables that interact with each other in VARIOUS WAYS (via the operators) so that you can't simply say: "Oh, it's variable 5 (V5) that you have to change".
You can't deconstruct the QS for an individual case. It simply CANNOT BE DONE, no way, no how.
What they could do to be transparent, and this would never happen because it involves trade secrets, is to answer the question by actually sending the complete formula to the website owner, filled in with values. But for 99% of people, it would be worthless. You couldn't figure out what it meant in real world terms.
And, of course, they might have to send that completed formula for every single keyword in an account.
Now, I say this is the SIMPLE version, because I'm keeping the weights as constants, when they need not be. They can be dynamic and changing and dependent on other variables. I'm making a similar assumption that the variables themselves are not very interdependent (affect each other's values).
So, it could be way more complex than the little formula type thing above.
And of course, there could be way more than 20 variables directly involved in calculating QS, and of course the variables I haven't directly mentioned that are used to calculate the 20 variables.
Let's compare this to another advertising medium:
Let's say you are the advertising manager of a TV station, and someone submits commercial that you feel is of low quality, and may cause viewers to change the channel. How would you Handle it?
Would you simply say - Your commercial is crap. You need to raise the quality of your commercial... unless you pay us 100 times the going rate, then we'll show it. (Oh and PS - your commercial is actually just fine - and you can pay the original amount, if you change the name of your company.)
Or - Would you tell them exactly what about their commercial is keeping it from airing, and lay out specific guidelines for commercials to keep your advertisers from guessing?
If this isn't a money grab - Then why would they raise the CPC? Why wouldn't they just ban a site until it meets the quality standard?
That's been explained several times in this forum (probably in this very thread). No need to repeat it, except to say that giving advertisers a choice--even a choice with only one reasonable option--is probably fairer and less subject to criticism than banning them altogether.
Then what the heck is a manual review? Is that a sham. If they cannot come to a conclusion looking at a few factors, then obviously this manual review they promise, is all a big joke.
Gives more credence to the fact that something is not 'kosher'....and that they have some other 'objectives' and a hidden agenda...which they cannot and will not communicate to advertisers.
Also, the only people requesting manual reviews will be people who were affected by the change. And not even all of those people will request reviews, because some will know that their landing pages aren't up to snuff.
... giving advertisers a choice--even a choice with only one reasonable option--is probably fairer and less subject to criticism than banning them altogether.
Why do you think banning them altogether was the only alternative? All they had to do was inform advertisers beforehand what was wrong with their landing pages and give them the opportunity to fix them - surely that would have been fairer and generated less criticism than raising the minimum CPC to an unreasonable level overnight.
[edited by: Kobayashi at 5:37 am (utc) on July 25, 2006]
[edited by: Kobayashi at 8:27 am (utc) on July 25, 2006]
That's been explained several times in this forum (probably in this very thread).
Sorry - But there hasn't been a reasonable explanation here or anywhere.
And to say that raising the CPC by 1000% is a reasonable option is just plain absurd.
A site either passes the quality test, or it doesn't. If Google was really set on raising the quality on all sites, then they'd deactivate the keywords that don't pass the quality test, until they did. And they wouldn't give the option of coming back online with a higher cpc.
That just means that those with deep pockets can still ram their low quality sites right on through.
The proof is in the pudding. There are more irrelevant sites per search now than there were before.
That's been explained several times in this forum (probably in this very thread). No need to repeat it, except to say that giving advertisers a choice--even a choice with only one reasonable option--is probably fairer and less subject to criticism than banning them altogether.
Google giving that choice at all to what it considers to be a "low quality" advertiser seems to be totally contrary to its stated plan to improve user experience. I might have missed someone's response to this question in another thread or perhaps even this one, but how does Google qualify allowing scammers with deep pockets to bypass Google's own philosophy on user experience, to appear at or near the top of the bids simply because they pay more?
As many have pointed out, intuitively any advertising venue like a magazine, billboard, tv station (or, say, a search engine) would (and in practice, do) completely disallow an ad they deem not of sufficient quality or appropriate content.
I still have yet to see a valid business-related explanation of this hyperinflation tactic (instead of simply disallowing until the advertiser passes muster), except the stated line that Google and its defenders here have taken: that it supposedly gives advertisers a "choice" and "encourages" them to improve the site's quality. This explanation is simplistic and specious at best.
Obviously, disallowing ads and providing specific reasons would work wonderfully as encouragement to the advertiser to change his or her site. It would provide an unambiguous message as to what course of action the advertiser needs to take in order to have his or her ads shown. On the other hand, hyperinflation and a perceived "choice" of action (improve the site or increase the bids) create ambiguity as to what Google's motives are, as well as provide a built-in method for any advertiser, scammer or otherwise, to defeat Google's quality guidelines and therefore undermine its philosophy on user experience. Surely Google must have considered this, as it appears to be squarely hypocritical to what they have publicly stated their landing page update is supposed to address.
Rather than a back-and-forth on whether Google is right or wrong, let's discuss the actual reasons that Google might have put in place an uneven hyperinflated bid structure, from a business standpoint. Being unschooled in business and a relative rookie in affiliate marketing, I'll admit that I don't see any other possible reason for this tactic other than a money grab by Google. However, I'm not necessarily going to stick with that assumption if other evidence comes to light. Any thoughts on how this hyperinflation method could legitimately be used by Google and not undermine its own newly publicized standards, and how it could be qualified as fair and ethical, would be greatly appreciated.
To address the quoted poster's assertion that Google is trying to avoid criticism: it's clear that the landing page update has caused a huge amount of criticism (as well as disbelief and confusion) among paying customers, in large part because of this dubious hyperinflation tactic. If Google had this particular rationale in mind, they certainly did not think it through. But more likely, avoiding criticism and appearing "fairer" were not their intentions at all.
An algorithm has a subjective birth. That is, manual reviews and statistical analysis etc. are used to set the parameters, meaning the result is essentially contrived. The algo is just a means of automating the process and justifying the results (however unpalatable). Why then can we not be told what it is that G seeks i.e. the outcomes they told the mathematicians to achieve with the algo?
I realise this sounds a touch rhetorical. I apologise, it's the best I could do after several refreshing ales.
I guess they must have assumed by bringing in a 'mystical measuring metric' (in a similar way to natural search's measuring) they would improve revenue while at the same time keeping advertisers competitive while trying to out-do each other on their QS?
To me this QS is such a load of cobblers. Some mystical measurment which deems how relavent my ads are, made up entriely by the people that make laughable amounts of cash from the ads. Makes you wonder if they are taking QS bribes. Fair enough, I don't want phone adverts showing up for TV searches, but to penalise your customers (the advertisers) who are genuinely doing a goob job is just plain silly. They've gone and just napalmed the entire market to catch a few low quality ads is my guess. All the while pushing more revenue to themselves.
Luckily I havn't had too many problems with QS myself, but at times it has been a little frustrating. It sure sounds to be much more predominant in the US than the UK, but it might simply be a matter of product.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree. But I can understand it.
If you understand it, that means you agree. If you agree, that means you justify it. It's simple. Otherwise, you suffer mental disorder - identity split!
And to say that raising the CPC by 1000% is a reasonable option is just plain absurd.
Of course, but I didn't say it was. The "one reasonable option" isn't paying a $10 minimum bid; it's creating an acceptable landing page.
They don't need a system where they ban people and then have a process where employees have to go and unban people. With the inflated bids, people "ban" themselves, but then the advertisers still have the ability to make changes and un-ban themselves automatically. No intervention on Google 's part. We know google loves automation, and this process is very hands off for them, for the most part. Much less then if they had to manually unban people.
It is interesting that some people think a banning would have been better than raising bids. Leaving out forewarning for now, why would anyone have wanted to have been outright banned than having their bids raised? I can't imagine anyone would have been happy about that possibility.
Finally, as of the day before these changes, many of these ads were running at low bid prices. Rome was not built in a day, so it is completely unnecessary to say "Today all these ads must be 100% removed from the network." By upping the bid price the get rid of the bulk of them, while giving them time to tweak things to get rid of the rest over time. They also give advertisers the chance to "un-ban" themselves and get lower click costs.
