Well, towards the end I came across this stunner:
"How does website load time affect my landing page"
It goes on to explain that starting in Feb 08 load time of lading pages will be factored into quality score and that there is some load time analysis page in your account which I cannot find.
Some other good stuff in this section of the FAQ is that they state a little more info how often they re-analyze lading pages for quality score:
The AdWords system re-evaluates landing pages on a regular basis (approximately once a month). If you make significant improvements to your website's load time, you should see an improved Quality Score and lower minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids. Note that your Quality Score may update incrementally over two to three months after you improve your load time.
What's real interesting is that if you try to find this info by searching the FAQ I couldn't find it. It appears to only be in the page containing the full FAQ:
Go here:
[adwords.google.com...]
Then search that page for:
"load time affect my landing page quality"
Also, I would hope they publish standards to shoot for and not base their definition of being slow by using a dial up standard.
Several my sites score a D simply based on the things that are server level and I can not control.
Also, the how many small to medium business are going to able to afford to use CDN. It's not pratical.
I sure hope they flesh this all out before they unleash it. It just may backfire and end up making a lot of advertisers stop bidding since their bids will be higher based on something they can't control.
I see another Google slap coming down the pike.
According to Google, "landing page quality" can affect minimum bids, but isn't a factor in ranking search-based ads.
It is a significant factor in contextual ads, especially site targeted campaigns.
I just hope they take into account that numerous items in YSlow are server level fixes. Anybody on a shared hosting acccount will not be able to implement them.
Why would they take that into account? Out of some sense of "fairness"?
Google has to please their end users. You might say that you - the advertiser - are ultimately their customer, but I beg to differ. They have to concern themselves with the quality of the end-user experience.
Now, there is precedence in the publishing industry - newspapers and magazines do accommodate small businesses with limited budgets - with classified ads and special out-of-the-way advertising sections.
Several my sites score a D simply based on the things that are server level and I can not control.
You certainly can - you know EXACTLY what you can do to improve your score - dump the shared hosting. COMPLETELY under your control!
You certainly can - you know EXACTLY what you can do to improve your score - dump the shared hosting. COMPLETELY under your control!
Right!
Mom and pop business shop is going to get a dedicated server and try to figure out that cra* and go ahead and get setup on a content delivery network for their small site.
If Google's move into this is to eliminate affiliates as I think might be a motive, then they are shooting them selves in the foot.
I venture a guess that a good portion of their adwords revenue is coming from affiliates and a lot of vendors rely on those affiliates.
I'm sorry, but basing a quality score on CDN and stuff that really does not slow it down that much for a smaller site is just plain stupid.
However, if you have site that takes a minute to load on a broadband connection, then I see the point.
Think about how many ranking factors you are sure of. Then think about how many more factors there are that are not on Google's help pages.
No, I can't be 100% sure that it's there, but I'd be very, very surprised if it did not come into the large equation. It will be calculated a slightly different way but I'd be willing to bet it'll be in there.
Amazon S3 can speed up content delivery and costs very little to use, but it's not on the YSlow CDN list, so the additional DNS request actually hurts your score.
Dedicated hosting is not that expensive, and if mom and pop can't afford $100-$200 a month for hosting, it's kind of hard to argue that they are in fact running a business. Hobby would be more like it.
I'd imagine that most small businesses will struggle much more with reducing the # of HTTP requests, knowing when to put a trailing slash on a hyperlink, etc.
I'm sure of this one. Google *explicitly* says that landing page quality doesn't affect search ad rankings. It's not implied, assumed, or just undocumented.
Read this:
[adwords.google.com...]
(Under search network, it says "Your landing page quality is not a factor.")
It's been that way since the beginning of landing page quality:
[adwords.blogspot.com...]
There are other references, but I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment.
The reason why I asked Adwords Advisor to comment is that we'd all like an explicit statement on this particular issue. Google likes to say "quality score" like it has a single specific meaning, but it doesn't.
I agree that if they use that Yslow score, they are morons and wasted a lot of years in school earning those PHDs.
In respect to this:
Dedicated hosting is not that expensive, and if mom and pop can't afford $100-$200 a month for hosting, it's kind of hard to argue that they are in fact running a business. Hobby would be more like it.
I can remember a few years Google wanted the Hobby site because those where usually the ones loaded with info and were not business oriented. Funny how going public can change a companies view on what's good and bad.
Also, that's all we need, moms and pops running servers who know nothing about them and end up getting them hacked so that spammers can use them at will. There is already enough of that going around.
Personally, I'd be a bit surprised if this were based on those factors
I'd also be surprised if dedicated hosting were necessary.
Mom-and-pops who are taking credit cards had better figure out some stuff about security and "running a server" though, or Google will be the least of their worries.
Being small doesn't excuse you from being responsible, and while you can certainly install a shopping cart on shared hosting, I have no idea how you'd get PCI compliant on a shared hosting account.
I have a dedicated server, and I don't "run" the thing. I have managed hosting, they apply patches, etc. Even with that, I need to keep up with security developments on the applications I run.
I run two dedicated servers and though they are managed, let's face it, you still have to know what you’re doing. The term "managed" seems to be different from host to host.
Yes, that Yslow tool is good, but if you have a site that is loading very fast to start with and it gets a D rating that will affect the quality over some simple technical server stuff that is not affecting the load time, that defeats the purpose of the load time quality score.
What's next; HTML Validation?
You can get certified on a shared account providing you’re using a good host and you have your own IP number.
Of course.
I was overly-broad when I said the solution was to "dump the shared hosting".
But the notion that mom-and-pops only have the choice of poor hosting is ridiculous.
There are other choices, and, as well, with shared hosting you can still vote with your feet. There is a LOT of competition, and there's a huge difference in quality between different shared hosts.
