What does the Quality Score error tell us?

[inbound]

The initial impression that I got from the QS change announcement led me to think we were looking at rarely matching keywords being the target of upcoming changes. With the effect being keywords that showed up very rarely would have their price increased dramatically (this would still allow high ticket, low volume advertisers to advertise - but would put off arbitragers).

I am now convinced that this is the case.

Let's avoid the current problem that's being sorted and look at why I'm convinced:

The current problem with QS actually shows us how long it takes for Google to process changes for all AdWords. It probably takes up to 1 to 4 days for changes to take full effect. Given this, and the huge resources Google has (and undoubtedly puts into their only real earner), it's not unreasonable to think that Google would REALLY like to get rid of massive keyword lists that do not perform.

How should they do that whilst retaining keywords that work? Simple, give keywords a bit of a chance then whack up the cost through QS. Voila! Keywords that have been thrown together and get no/few impressions over a long period can be de-activated without upsetting most people.

Google have been telling us for long enough to trim/optimise keyword lists. They've now lost patience.

We all probably suspect that there are a small percentage of account holders that consume a great deal of AdWords resources. If this is true then we'd have to agree that Google has to deal with it.

So what will the change mean?

Terms that get lots of impressions and clicks will, for most advertisers, not be effected by next week's update.

Terms at the other end of the spectrum (with very low impressions/clicks over a 12+ month history) will be the ones that see the most increases.

If a term makes $10,000 per conversion but only get 1 click a year then it's reasonable to assume $10 a click is sustainable if the conversion rate is O.K.(so a niche advertiser can still run all their keyword combinations to catch potential business). However, if a term only makes 5 cents for Google and 10 cents for the arbitrager once every 10 years, there has to be a point where Google says it's not worth it.

Terms that are in the middle ground may see small changes.

Do you agree? Or am I talking rubbish?

[sailorjwd]

Different observations here.

I just took a look at my arbitrage account that I pretty much gave up on and haven't looked at in detail in two months. I was curious to see what the new QS display would say.

To my amazement 100s of long tail keywords were marked as 'Great' with a .03 min bid. Many keywords that had min bid of .15 before now have min bids of .05 and .06

I've had a bid of .08 on all keywords for many months. Here is the kicker - the spy glass says that the keyword isn't active because of a low quality score.

So, I guess at this point the new quality score display is totally inaccurate and we'll need to wait til next week for it to work (if ever).

[momotan]

I say it's wishfull thinking. Google needs to make cash to keep the shareholders happy because they remain a one trick pony. The days of massive growth because people flocked to adwords are done as everyone who is serious about making money is on adwords. The last trick in the book is to see how much they can gouge the client base. They look at the average conversion data that all the dummies who used their analyctics has fed them, get an idea for each keyword what the ROI is, factor in their own costs, and decide what margin they want and what the average ROI they should leave to the advertiser. If your making more than the average, your poor quality. If your making less then the average your great quality. When the average ROI goes down, it means G is gets a bigger margin and so it keeps going. The next update uses the new ROI figures and the average goes down again. Of course it's only a matter of time before this last trick stops working. Competition and the loss of big ad budgets will eventually set off the alarms at G that they have hit the theoritical gouge limit. At that point they will have to roll back, the stock will dive to a proper earnings multiple. Heads will roll, overworked stockholder employees will quit and so on and G will become just another big corporation rather than everyones darling.