I guess I didn't have enough "content" on the page and I (God forbid) was selling something.
So apparently I'm running a charity. I'm supposed to pay Google to drive people to a site that sells nothing overtly and doesn't require any sort of action on the users part.
Only then can I be deemed worthy to sit alongside the likes of "Free ipods!" and "Find Waffles on ebay" ads.
Like I said, apparently I'm running a charity and just needed Google to tell me so.
If one of the goals is to eliminate arbitrage sites, then why not simply state that as a clear rule - no arbitrage. And then enforce it.
Easy to say. Hard to do. Also, arbtritrage is only one aspect of the "user experience."
I'll voice the opinion of the great silent majority: when the complainers describe their own sites, I'm glad that Google is having the integrity to get rid of these guys. Good riddance.Register-to-browse, no online payments, lousy shipping options, no images, lack of descriptions just "click to buy", affiliates -- these are the ultra-low-quality sites I hate to waste my time on while I look for a good merchant. They have infested the Google AdWords ads so thoroughly that you are forced to instead go to human-reviewed recommendations of merchants to find a good source for purchasing.
I'm delighted that Google is booting out these sites. It will be a big improvement in internet commerce for the vast majority (everyone except the few running the rotten sites). Now, there are so many terrible sites that people buy everything they can from Amazon just to avoid spending the time to find anyone else--I do the same. I even keep a list of every quality merchant I find, because they are so rare. There are some good merchants succeeding on the web with high quality--of product information, online inventory, payment, and shipping--and life will be better as there are more of them. (Even on Amazon you have to look for "sold by and shipped from Amazon"--many of their third-party sellers are very poor, too.)
I'm sure this has been a tough step for Google to take, so maybe it really does come from the Google founders. The best result will be to inspire Yahoo and MSN to do exactly the same thing to improve their quality similarly.
You sir, seem to be someone who just likes watching others suffer.
My site was a full ecommerce store, full online payment options, high conversion rates, high customers satisfaction, blog and forum to discuss products, no affiliates, no adsense, all unique content with full product descriptions and user comments.
.20 bid to $10 overnight. Google says "tough". My competitors who have maybe half of the above, one page sites, and adsense are still listed. Even better, the top 2 spots in my niche are MFA sites that weren't there before. I'm guessing their bid prices went down so now they can dominate the niche.
Google's "system" is not working as intended, unless its only intent was to raise their short term stock price- in which case, it works flawlessly.
You think legit merchants being affected is some kind of conspiracy theory?
I've spent six figures on Adwords and my site is PR5 with all of the above.
Google doesn't care.
Rather it is about imposing an artificially high, too high in most cases, CPC on keywords that they beleive generate a higher than normal ROI for advertisers at the current average CPC. These were the exact and only type of keywords that were affected in my account.
[edited by: Kobayashi at 9:32 pm (utc) on July 15, 2006]
I keep hearing this repeated but even Google has to realize if the person is searching for "fuzzy green widgets" that they really want to find them. It does nto mean i want info or anything like. I would like to be able to buy them. especially whenthe ad says "get fuzzy green widgets here" or something close.
No it doesn't. Just because I search for something in Google does not mean I want to buy it. Your job is to take traffic, and even the lurkers and investigators, though, and get a portion of them to buy now or come back and buy later.
That is why so many continue to struggle with this. Google is not a shopping search engine, it is an information search engine. It is all fine and good if you want to sell someone something through the listing, just realize the first thing on every Google users mind is not to buy something.
I was looking for something this morning and getting a search page full of adsense wasa bad experince but I noticed that they do not prohibit this. They just charge him more...maybe?
They don't prohbit anything that is within their TOS and not illegal. People pay different rates based on am myriad of factors. You just need to realize that every person typing in a search phrase in Google is not doing it with a credit card in the other hand. Google has realized it and wants to improve the experience. They blend the ads into the search engine as a way to provide information and improve pass-through. Just being smacked in the face with an affiliate buy-now button would be a bad experience for the majority of people hitting it.
So yeah when someone searches for green fuzzy widgets, they ARE likely looking for information about green fuzzy widgets. Perhaps that quest for knowledge also includes how and where to buy it, so you make that a part of your informative package to the visitor, so they can buy from you.
If you just assume everyone who clicks on an ad is coming to buy something, there is no wonder you and others like you are having all kinds of trouble with the quality changes. Until you actually understand your visitor and what they are doing, it is unlikely you are going to understand how to provide a quality experience.
[edited by: aeiouy at 9:45 pm (utc) on July 15, 2006]
You could not be more wrong with your misguided statement. When the end user a.k.a "the customer" cannot seem to find what they are looking for in the organic listings ..... a well targeted and relevant adword source should be able to deliver.
I'm not here to bash Google. I have always believed in and admired the positives they have added to the internet. However, this latest fiasco has completely broken a system that could have been tweaked in less detrimental ways.
For any advertiser who has spent considerable time cultivating and nurturing ads that produce ..... this is a complete slap in the face.
I cannot imagine MOST advertisers paying for an ad who is not trying to match what the consumer searched for with what the ad landing page targets. It just does not make good business sense. If they search for bananas and I pay for an ad that delivers them washing machines ........ then I (the advertiser) is the one who loses $$.
A simpler way to have dealt with the MFA ads would have been for the quality control bot to detect them and at that point raise the minimum to an out of reach level.
This is not what has happened.
I cannot imagine anyone paying for adwords who is not trying to match what the consumer searched for with what the ad landing page targets.
Are you serious? That has been a huge problem for years. Google has improved it a lot, but it used to be ridiculous.
It just does not make good business sense. If they are searching for bananas and I am paying for an ad that delivers them washing machines ..... then I (the advertiser) is the one who loses $$.
It makes good business sense if you still convert enough people to make it profitable. And in cases this is still the situation. Problem is it really pisses off the other 99% of the visitors who clicked on the ad, and leaves them with a bad taste in their mouth. This is exactly why Google is making these changes. If there is a way for someone to exploit a situation to turn a profit they will. Saying that it is not profitable is just ignorant of reality. Google's intent here is to make the practice less profitable or completely unprofitable, so people stop doing it. This is a much more effective method than just adding it to the TOS and telling people don't be bad.
No it doesn't. Just because I search for something in Google does not mean I want to buy it. Your job is to take traffic, and even the lurkers and investigators, though, and get a portion of them to buy now or come back and buy later.
I understand this to some extent, but paying for traffic without any intention to eventually monetize that traffic in some form is rediculous. I'm pretty sure this is not what you mean but it is a thought that crossed my mind.
It would be like paying for traffic to something like Wikipedia with nothing to buy, no ads, and no affiliate links. Essentially paying to provide people with "quality" information and hoping for zero retun on investment.
I'm also not sure I agree with or compeltely understand your intent behind taking traffic from "lurkers and investigators" as necessary.
Without question you will get these kind of prospects clicking on your ad and you shoud include information for this group but at the same time it should be your intent to craft an ad that effectively eliminates the least qualified of this demographic to decrease costs and increase ROI.
What we seem to be dealing with here is Google's focus is on making the experience better for EVERYONE while as a marketer I must selective target the more qualified individuals in order to make a profit and as a natural result run afoul of Google's intentions (from my perspective)
Another way to look at it is that every single keyword (and in particualr high volume more generic terms) have an entire ecosystem of individual intents, wants, needs, and interests from searchers.
Becasue of this you must craft your ad copy to appeal to only a subset or demographic of every search terms universe (unless the search term is something like "I want to buy green widgets from yoursite.com") otherwise you severely dilute your profit potential.
If you just assume everyone who clicks on an ad is coming to buy something, there is no wonder you and others like you are having all kinds of trouble with the quality changes. Until you actually understand your visitor and what they are doing, it is unlikely you are going to understand how to provide a quality experience.
Agreed....to some extent. Would it be more fair to say that because of your ad copy you expect to attract visitors who are somewhere reasonably close to making a purchase and as a result are more qualified?
As for understaning our customers, who's to say we don't? What makes Google the expert? The assumption is that Google somehow knows my business better than I do and that is a very big assumption.
I pointed out that some of my inactive keywords had conversions over 10% and my rep shrugged it off saying that conversion means nothing as things can be done to inflate conversion rates. (this is the kind of support spending 130k+ a month gets you Although my affected site is up for rereview.)
What does this mean? A conversion that is too good through fanatical testing and tweaking is "shady"?
I guess the long winded point I'm trying to make is that if you have:
months of data,
dozens of different ad copy tests
dozens of tests on content, layout, colors, number of links,
keyword conversion data
exit surveys on non purchasers,
exit surveys of customers directly after sale
surveys a week after purchase
And all that data has been used to build your pages, reduce refunds, smooth the sales process, and reduce doubt and buyer's remorse.
How can Google send a computer program or a human with not near as much knowledge about the market as you and determine on a whim that the site is in effect useless and not relevant?
In short, they can't. Not with any true accuracy. But reality is they can (though not accurately) because it is their system and threin lies the rub. they can make the rules.
I'm of the group that feels that if Google wants to ban or eliminate a certain segment of the market they should just update their TOS and be done with it. So much easier.
But how can you tell someone their site is not good enough when all data you have says it is and then give no feedback, no suggestions, no reasons, no explanations in any shape or form how to improve.
The problem is not the change, the problem is having no idea how to comply with and meet the criteria of the new changes.
This is a much more effective method than just adding it to the TOS and telling people don't be bad.
Is it? At least then you would know why your account got hammered. You would be in direct violation of their TOS.
Langin page checks in such situations of deceptive ad text leading to completely unrelated topical pages is fine. I have no problem whatsoever with lading pages being checked but if something is found lacking offer up suggestions to improve.
Is that so much to ask?
If someone can write an ad that leads to a lading page that equally appeals to every subset of a keyword's search market (buyers, info seekers, freebie seekers, comparison shoppers, skeptics, etc) then they are the best marekter that has ever walked the planet.
If one of the goals is to eliminate arbitrage sites, then why not simply state that as a clear rule - no arbitrage. And then enforce it.Easy to say. Hard to do.
Really? How about the rule "No contextual ads on the landing page". What's hard about that?
Your job is to take traffic, and even the lurkers and investigators, though, and get a portion of them to buy now or come back and buy later.
Great, we can all pay for the privilege of building little virtual amusement parks for visitors in order to fund another Boeing 767 for google. Maybe if it occurs to the visitor at some point in their lives they might come back and buy something from us someday. Cool.
Did they do this? No they ruined people's lives and destroyed their businesses. They gave no explicit warnings, only vague references to quality scores. They are a company with low ethics in my opinion.
I'm sure I'm accurate in that because nobody here would ever want to use ads that might sound like they provide in-depth objective information about widgets, when, in fact, the landing page is really there to sell.
They gave no explicit warnings, only vague references to quality scores.
That's because this isn't about increasing quality, it's about increasing prices. Get it?
If this were about improving quality, Google would warn low quality sites to bring things up-to-snuff, or else the boot. They wouldn't give low quality sites the OPTION to still be on the network if they paid-up.
Really, the veil on this is pretty thin.
That's because this isn't about increasing quality, it's about increasing prices. Get it?
I'm starting to believe that this topic is too complex for a whole lot of people to grasp, so they come up with simplistic explanations that they can understand, which are completely wrong, or so incomplete they are misleading.
...and of course, there's this sense of entitlement.
Ultimately, yes, it's about revenue, but not in a simple way. I doubt there's any point in trying to explain it in any detail. Improving "user experience" is definitely connected to long term income levels for google. and survival of its programs. Duh.
In the shorter term, the deal is that the are NOT trying to get people to pay 10 dollars per click as a way to improve revenue. What they ARE doing is changing their balance of revenue from having thousands of exceedingly low cost clicks, and shifting it to other advertisers who are already paying (for many of the same keywords) higher per click values, because they get sufficient ROI.
They are clearing the way for visitors to click the higher value ads, AND they are clearing the way for "quality" advertisers so they won't have to compete (and disappear) with sites that mislead, or do not add value.
We stopped advertising much on adwords months ago because of the junk sites we had to compete against (mostly MFA's). Now that they are mostly gone, we've reactivated and increased our bids (btw, we have not YET been hit by the jacked up prices).
If the goal was to increase click values overall, they would not have made the increases so ludicrous.
So, you ask. How come some keywords with no competition got jacked? Because they use a PROFILING system. And then an algo. They are not perfect, never will be.
Finally, the problems they are trying to solve are certainly caused by google's earlier decisions. It's sad that people have to suffer, but if you do business on the Internet you need to understand (so many people don't) that the ride WILL end as you know it.
It happens in offline industry. Moreso online. Things change. Buggy whip manufacturers sure weren't happy with Ford. Companies that rely on oil have suffered because of oil prices. Exchange rates change crippling companies.
If you aren't ready you die. If you think you are entitled because you've had a run you expect to change, you die.
A lot of people with very little understanding of how do create and sustain companies have had a really good ride these last years, and now, unprepared, they crash.
Sorry. We lost 2/3 of our revenue as a result of google serp changes. It sucks. Since we've been doing business online our revenue streams have been crapped out at LEAST four times. But it's how it works. We've been at least semi-prepared, and that's why we're still around.
If this were about improving quality, Google would warn low quality sites to bring things up-to-snuff, or else the boot.
Makes sense. You're dead wrong. What you don't understand is one of google's real prime directives which is "Use algos, NOT humans"
And the other is "NEVER EVER give away proprietary information that can be used to game the system".
If you don't understand these basic google principles, you can't possibly understand their actions.
When I buy a coke I don't want an "experience" I just want a soda because I'm thirsty.
tough doo doo ..you're going to get an experiance whether you like it or not ;)
[coke.com...]
When I buy a coke I don't want an "experience" I just want a soda because I'm thirsty.
AAARGGGH.
You don't even realize that you ARE having an experience when you buy and drink the coke. And if you were buying a beverage just because you are thirsty, you sure as heck wouldn't buy a coke, unless, of course you were like six years old and didn't know any better.
Here. Thirsty? I've got a coke for you. Ok. It's warm. It's got maggots in it. A little arsenic for flavoring. I'm serving it up to you in a cowpie cup.
Still want to buy it? It's still a coke.
Help me out here...someone. Is this stuff not kind of well...obvious? Either I'm really smart, or really stupid, but don't other people get this stuff?
[edited by: rbacal at 9:27 pm (utc) on July 16, 2006]
Makes sense. You're dead wrong. What you don't understand is one of google's real prime directives which is "Use algos, NOT humans"And the other is "NEVER EVER give away proprietary information that can be used to game the system".
Google uses a bot to (supposedly) determine quality. When they find low quality, they jack-up minimum bids. What's the difference, in terms of human intervention and giving away secrets, between jacking up bids and completely disabling a keyword without any option to enable? I really don't understand how your argument is relevant.
If the objective is high quality, the most direct way to get there is to simply get low quality off the network. Why use the minimum bid as a mechanism at all? That's like saying, "we know you're low quality, but we'll overlook your low quality if you pay up."
You don't even realize that you ARE having an experience when you buy and drink the coke
Fine. Give' em an experience. Mold the bottle into a sexy shape. Do some nice, quality printing on the cans. Make some pretty point-of-sale displays.
But put an audio chip on each can, that gives you the history of the coca-cola company, coca-cola lore, information on how it is made, and a nice presentation on fair labor practices? That's overboard.
What's really overboard is some third party telling Coke that they have to do this.
Here. Thirsty? I've got a coke for you. Ok. It's warm. It's got maggots in it. A little arsenic for flavoring. I'm serving it up to you in a cowpie cup.Still want to buy it? It's still a coke.
Finger, meet Moon.
You're confusing product with presentation. Presentation ("experience") is the creation of an illusion of quality and nothing more.
A kick-ass beautiful experience of a website isn't going to change what's in the bottle OR the cowpie cup - for better OR worse. The quality of presentation has no effect on the quality or substance of the product - only on the perception of quality. The quality of the product itself remains static whether the website sux or not. True, some users will be taken in by the slick presentation, but others will resent it and prefer a straightforward approach that doesn't insult their intelligence.
In the dirt world people have no qualms about shopping at warehouse outlets where the merchandise isn't on shelves, but stacked instead in cut-open shipping cartons in the aisles in order to save money.
If a shop has what I want and I am willing to pay their price, I don't give a crap if the place is in an older building or needs some paint, or the cash registers aren't polished- and the local newspaper doesn't care either when it comes to selling them ad space at the same rate as the fancy new store down the street.
what we as publishers were working our a$$ off from day one, namely the knowledge of earning money from attracting visitors through useful content is now being delivered to the adwords people.
i had never thought that they have such huge problems understanding what it's all about. well, i knew that it's close to impossible to make a good marketer out of a salesman, but the amateurish points of view in these threads about all important issues from customer behavior to advertiser responsibility are nearly unbelievable. no wonder why publishers have to deal with more crap than quality ads in their ad blocks. please tell me that not all adwords advertisers are such dilettantes and that there is indeed a silent majority with profound knowledge.
Just so you are aware, this algo update has NO EFFECT on advertisers who are currently publishing on Google's content network (ie adsense). 100% of the websites deemed low qualtiy by the Google Algo are still eligible to run on the content network without any change to the bid.
" no wonder why publishers have to deal with more crap than quality ads in their ad blocks "
I have not seen an increase in CTR yet, but it is inevitable since 70% of the ads that used my keyword pair basically "did no such thing", but were just trying to loop people in. Dell did it too, and those have diminsihed some.
So they just may be doing something right.
(BTW the greatest KWD increases for me were in the march/april changes. Some increases now, but the absolute "dead ON" kwds that reflect my site are at the same price or actually lower.
They got rid of a lot of adword fraud.
[edited by: Quantam_Goose at 11:51 pm (utc) on July 16, 2006]
" no wonder why publishers have to deal with more crap than quality ads in their ad blocks "
Probably because many of the same advertisers with the same attitudes advertise on both the search and content networks.
MoTi did not say that "more crap than quality ads" was a new problem for AdSense publishers. It isn't, to judge from the frequent threads about MFAs in the AdSense forum. (Mind you, it seems to be a bigger problem for some publishers, or possibly for some sectors, than for others.)
Google uses a bot to (supposedly) determine quality. When they find low quality, they jack-up minimum bids. What's the difference, in terms of human intervention and giving away secrets, between jacking up bids and completely disabling a keyword without any option to enable? I really don't understand how your argument is relevant.
Read the quote AND my response. It works better that way.
i had never thought that they have such huge problems understanding what it's all about. well, i knew that it's close to impossible to make a good marketer out of a salesman, but the amateurish points of view in these threads about all important issues from customer behavior to advertiser responsibility are nearly unbelievable. no wonder why publishers have to deal with more crap than quality ads in their ad blocks. please tell me that not all adwords advertisers are such dilettantes and that there is indeed a silent majority with profound knowledge.
It's pretty shocking, and it's a byproduct of google providing huge opportunities (along with other currently available revenue streams), that require almost NO business sense, experience, knowledge, understanding, AT ALL.
It's understandable that people with some limited skill sets who (to their credit) have leveraged those skills into significant income, get really really upset when someone changes the terrain in a way where their skill sets are worth much less. And they have nothing else to bring to the table.
Those people will ride the train (because they have no other way of locomoting) until it goes right over the cliff.
Thankfully, there are others, no doubt participating in this discussion that have other skills in addition, and although upset (who can blame anyone?) they don't feel that google "ruined their life". They'll ride the train, see the cliff, and hop another freight, mabye going in another direction.
I feel sorry for the people in the first group except that it's their business decisions that put them in a vulnerable position.
PS. I EXPECT google (and other companies) to regularly do things that would "ruin my life", if I allowed it, and was unprepared.
If you want the monkey to eat the banana only show him the banana. Don't show him the apple, orange, or bright ball to play with or he will lose the plot.
