Beat Google's Quality /profit score system?

[hercules]

Google is owned by shareholders and share holders want more profit every quarter. For Google the shareholders expectations are high if it comes to growth and revenue. Google needs to meet these "absurd" expectations in order to keep the share price up. Shareholders value short term profits more then long term profits. it comes down to that every three months they need to report higher profits.

I think Google made with the Google profit/quality score a simple tool with which they can fairly easy control the profits by asking higher minimum bids to meet they expectations of share holders.

I'm not raising them for all of my clients... for three months

[Quadrille]

Why tie your business decisions to google's?

Every business you ever deal with seeks to make a profit, and each one has different pressures at different times, influencing their decisions.

Your decisions about Google should be about how to make your profits, not how to stop them making theirs.

I suggest you rethink your business strategy - or avoid doing business with a company whose actions obsess you. No one forces you to deal with Google; that business decision is yours and yours alone.

[pdivi]

I agree with both viewpoints -- the QS is a short-term profit optimizer, and whether or not to be a part of it is simply a business decision.

The way I see it, using paid search has made me lazy. I can manage my entire spend electronically over just 3 providers and get ROI delivered to my doorstep in realtime. It's an advertiser's dream! When that dream was rattled by the QS in April, I forced myself to hunt for individual advertising opportunities just like in the good old days.

While most of the alternatives I found suck, there are a few golden ones. Individual publishers who are cutting out Adsense and want to do direct PPC deals, old fasioned CPM deals, and some new pay-for-performance (aquisition) networks... Dig around and you'll be surprised. You may not beat Adwords volume, but you can definitely beat Adwords ROI.

Google is in panic mode, levering up price on their only revenue-producing product, which is now a crusty 5+ years old and way beyond its growth years. The future is elsewhere. The best business move now is to go out and find it.

[Soze]

See, the trick behind these QS updates is that it isn't forcing you to bid more, but rather force you to pay more. Before this update, crappy ads wouldn't even run because they would costs multiple dollars per click.

Google got wise to this and figured, hey, why not let these people bid for $.40? No one clicks them anyway, and it will simply jack up the prices of the ads above it.

Since your cost is based on the performance and bid of the ad below you, by putting a higher priced ad below you, they will effectively increase your cpc. It's better for google to show a crappy ad for .50 than no ad at all. People are much more willing to bid high on keywords that never get any clicks.