A high quality ad with a high quality page and high ctr can be paying .01 a click regardless if they are selling high or low margin items. I realize I am showing the best case example but I have noticed that my profits in the same ereas is not determined by competition but by google.
It's part of a general trend on the part of Google to get website owners to do what THEY want. They are leading us around by a ring in our noses. Nobody writes content for their users any more - they write it to satisfy Google's ever-changing whims. Now they are extending this to paid advertising. So, now we won't write our ads and landing pages to satisfy our customers, but to satisfy Google.
At some point, we all have to just say "no". I wouldn't be a surprise to see a move on the part of website owners to swallow hard and walk away from Google. Ban their bots, and post a statement explaining to your users why they should use another search engine.
The reason this is bad for end-users is that it doesn't appear there really is anything good for the end-user in all this. Despite their "do no evil" slogan that is rapidly becoming a joke that will eventually haunt them, they don't seem to particularly care how website owners - doing Google's bidding - arrive at the end that they want - which appears to be putting money in Google's pockets.
I don't see this going anywhere good for the end user - and Google could care less. Short-sighted, to say the least.
Now they are extending this to paid advertising. So, now we won't write our ads and landing pages to satisfy our customers, but to satisfy Google.
There's nothing new about advertising media telling advertisers or their agencies what is and isn't acceptable, or rejecting whole categories of advertising. (Years ago, PLAYBOY wouldn't take ads for deodorants, for example--not because deodorants were inherently bad, but because PLAYBOY felt that deodorant ads didn't fit the magazine's desired image.)
I am troubled that Google is deciding for itself what constitutes value-added. If an affiliate is successful at referring sales to a merchant site, I would imagine both the customer and the merchant would consider that the affiliate site is, indeed, providing a value-added service. I'd argue that even if an affiliate uses no original content, but finds that a pink background sells better than the merchant's blue background, there's value added. I support the notion that Google’s algorithm tries to make sure that a landing page is relevant to an AdWord ad, but it now seems they’ve gone well beyond that in adding their own subjective judgment about a page’s “value” to the Quality Score. The marketplace is a far better judge.
Many years ago I did consulting work in the Soviet Union where natural market forces were replaced by a centralized planning system. We all know the result...
There's nothing new about advertising media telling advertisers or their agencies what is and isn't acceptable
Right but unlike most advertising media Google does not tell you specifically what you need to change to become "acceptable".
... or rejecting whole categories of advertising.
Right but Google has not rejected whole categories of ads as only about half of my ads were affected and all of my ads are in the same "category".
[edited by: Kobayashi at 1:24 am (utc) on July 19, 2006]
Your jersey cow page about jersey cows "isn't" actually about jersey cows but "get all of the about jersey cows at ebay and amazon" is fine.
and unfortunately , there is no Government legislation or control over Google. In any industry, monopoly companies are monitored carefully for their actions, not so on the internet... unfortunately.
