In August, we introduced the Quality Score along with the launch of quality-based minimum bids, letting you know that we evaluate many factors, such as your ad text and clickthrough rate (CTR) to determine the minimum bid for your keyword. Today, we started incorporating a new factor into the Quality Score -- the landing page -- which will look at the content and layout of the pages linked from your ads.
Guidelines for landing pages [adwords.google.com]
To do this two weeks before the holiday seems just a bit crass. What would it have hurt to wait till the 26th? And they can't claim it was to improve the results for the holiday shopping traffic, that started three weeks ago and is a week from being over. This smacks of a "look what we can do" attitude and not in a positive way.
And for the record, I was not affected. Maybe I will be in the future, who knows. Such is the nature of this business. But I like to think that I do a good job and don't create garbage. But I certainly don't see that as a reason to more crulely than nessecery "stick it" to someone who does.
It means that such publishers are not completely cut off from holiday shopping season altogether, they can still grab a bit of it in before the Q1 lull, with ads running that are appropriate for their pages and that have value to their users.
Some publishers really are in it for the long term, with visitors bookmarking their sites and coming back. Junk ads running hurts those publishers short and long term, and ultimately could degrade the public's perception of the Adwords/Adsense program. That benefits no one except maybe the few who capitalize on weaknesses in the program at the expense of everyone else concerned.
If the change is meant to improve ad relevance, then it is doing the opposite right now.
Unless it is still being tweaked...
Quality score is used to determine initial ranking, not continued ranking.
Please could someone point me to where this has been said by Google
Please excuse me for being new at posting here, I've only had my websites for a year and I know a lot of you are old-hands at this.... but I have to say:
1) This change happened overnight to existing ads (even the Google rep saw this and agreed that I had strong keywords and valid landing pages, but could not say how this happened)
2) Many of my ads had a 1.5 to 2% CTR keyword and yet they are now almost ALL inactive and asking for a minimum of $10
3) I've lost an entire day (and probably the whole weekend) during the holiday season to what the rep says is a 'glitch'
This is very is annoying but I completely understand the philosophy of what they are trying to do. I for one am irritated when I search for something and am directed to a webpage full of links to somewhere else, or completely irrelevant information. My site is not like that, I have some good information out there.
That said, I applaude Google for trying to make their system better, but agree with others that this could have (should have) been done at a more appropriate time... such as after the holidays.
in the midst of heavy holiday shopping season is that they can now put Adsense back up on sites
But that kind of goes along with what I was saying. People in this are going to be hurt and helped. Really, how much of a help is it to you to get this "gift" now. How fast can most people put adsense back up on all their pages? Holiday traffic will start to drop off sharply as of Weds. and I am sure people had other things they wanted to do this weekend other than work on websites.
This kind of change should have been done in October/November (like the last organic update) or in January. Frankly, no one wins with the change now, even those with less competition. Everyone walks away with a bitter taste, whether it be "it's all gone" or "if only they had done it sooner".
I've lost an entire day (and probably the whole weekend) during the holiday season to what the rep says is a 'glitch'
Did the rep say that it was a glitch that was being fixed? Something specific to your account, or system-wide? Any ETA?
I thought of calling them today, but figured they would be pretty busy. If there was something they could do to get things running again, I wish I'd have called them. Is this something they have to be notified about on a per-account basis?
Right now, (6:20 Pacific) I'm at 60% of yesterday's clicks. So, I'm pretty lucky, maybe will get 75% of what I had yesterday. Some campaigns are clicking along pretty normal. Others just seem to be shut off. Some just dead zero.
there are adsense publishers who are advertising on huge numbers of keywords. whats on their pages? either nothing or scraped content.
One of those guys has now risen to a higher position in my neck of the woods. Clicking on the ad after you searched for an automotive ad just shows a wedding picture and nothing to click on but 2 columns of AdSense ads. Google has *got* to take out the garbage if they're going to survive.
iPo
I cannot understand why the minimum bid for some keywords like a toy that I am selling are $10.00. That's insane! Could it be a glitch?
iPo
If it's not, then their attempt at trying to improve profits doesn't make alot of sense on alot of occasions. For this toy, would you make money bidding on this at $10? Hardly. Probably wouldn't make a dime if it was at $1. So you just don't bid on it, Google makes nothing instead of maybe a little...
Hey everyone, heres soemthing I noticed to help you out. Three of my landing pages were hit VERY hard, with keywords ( that have been running for 2-3 yrs ) now requiring $5 or $10 where I used to pay $0.40
In any case, its not 100% but.. these are also coincidentally pages that I have been testing ADSENSE on. I am an affiliate marketer ... but added some adsense as a test.. even though I am not thinking of going into arbitrage..
anyways.. if you dont need adsense on your landing page.. you might want to think abotu takin git off..
I took mine off asap.. they werent doing that well anyway, since my page content does very well by itself..
so yea Im guessing adsense ( especially high up ) on your landing page may contribute to a negative score for that landing page.. anyone else seeing this?
Tomorrow, they will want to look at your credit history to decide how much share you should get.
If it's not, then their attempt at trying to improve profits doesn't make alot of sense on alot of occasions. For this toy, would you make money bidding on this at $10? Hardly. Probably wouldn't make a dime if it was at $1. So you just don't bid on it, Google makes nothing instead of maybe a little...
I think this is a glitch or design flaw in the system.
I had ONE adgroup where I had a similar problem. It was a $15 book. The keywords were very specific - variations on the book title. I mean, we are talking 8-10 word keywords!
The more specific the keyword, the higher the price.
They had min bids of .50, 1.00, 2.00, and 5.00.
Who in their right mind would pay $5 for a keyword that could only possibly refer to a $15 book? (title, subtitle, author).
A rep explained that these were previously-unbid keywords, and that I could probably clear the logjam by bidding high and getting a few hits, and then the price would come down.
I just walked away from it. I'll let somebody else do the pioneering work.
OK, maybe that's why they reward people with idiotic keyword substitution campaigns? Maybe they are paying big bucks for their content-free ads.
A rep explained that these were previously-unbid keywords, and that I could probably clear the logjam by bidding high and getting a few hits, and then the price would come down.
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Yeah, this is quite funny. Basically what they are saying is, "Lose your ass, so that you could bring the price down.".
Amazing.
I called the google rep yesterday and she said even though my page was really relavant, it didn't have the "search form" directly on it. Even though my ad talks nothing about search what-so-ever.
Well I switched half of my landing pages over to a new page WITH the search page on it.
They still say inactive, so I guess I have to wait for this retarted robot to scan my landing page again and see what happens?
I can't contact google either till monday. :-(
Im about to go from spending $1000 a day down to about $50 :-(
All of my high performing keywords were even at the first position!
What can I do, this is nuts, anyone having similar situations?
Adsense review of my site:
'Try blending the ads into the content of the page'
what the f?
Customer service is not a Google forte.
Keep sleeping Google... Y and M will kick your butt.
Definite case of right hand not knowing what left hand is doing.
Isn't it possible that the right hand is listening to what the left hand has been telling them? Has anyone considered that complaints from publishers about ads running on their sites might have been taken into consideration?
In the meantime I have a temporary solution that will take me all weekend, but so far it's working. I had another website that I'd started a few months ago and meant to get going, but never really did. I only had about 10 products on it, and all of my keywords were active and happy. So, I simply moved my best products over to the other website (thank god drag and drop works in Frontpage) and then created new adwords for that website. Nothing is inactive and I copied the same exact ad over. So I know for sure it's something the googlebotdecided about my landing pages.
What's funny is that the new website is set up exactly the same as the old webiste. If I didn't have a different color and some different images, it would be the same. I just hope googlebot doesn't decide to visit my new site and do the same thing. It's a pain to do but I don't really have much of a choice. I either lose about $1000 or I work this weekend. Good thing it's cold outside.
That type of think^H^H^H^H^Hfighting talk will not be tolerated (well, believed) at WW!
If there's not a black helicopter, a personal vendetta, and the opportunity for M$ to whip G's ass, involved in your speculation then we're not interested, so save your reasoned and thoughtful approach for ... um ... yourself... P-%
Rgds
Damon
What do people think happens with complaints submitted by publishers about ads?
I'm more of a AdSense user than an AdWords user but there exist two contrasting pieces of advice as regards blending/non-blending of ads by Google.
I, for one, think the whole system needs to be cleaned up and this is a welcome step in that direction BUT it's a little late in the day for G to be doing this with Y out with their version and MSN getting closer.
If they had taken other steps years ago, such as checking every AS user's site instead of just the first one, we wouldn't be in this mess now, would we?
Very True ,there is money to be made if you have the capital and know how to exploit the inefficiencies to your favour...
