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]
So we have confirmation that it is an algo but not properly researched or tested if one of my clients campaign (msg #:108) is anything to go by unless of course it is a regional problem by ISP and beyond their control.
I have a question, is the problem of adword results disappearing UK only or also happening in other countries?
I am in direct contact with Adwords support in the UK at the moment and might/hope/may/may not be able to throw some light on the matter at a later date!
Regards
EW
So now to get a higher quality score, I have to include these variations which will make the ad text and landing page text more awkward to read?
And some of my best keywords are those including "com" for example, "widgets com"
What about misspellings?
Do I now have to include misspellings in ad text and on my landing pages?
*sigh*
kz
Create a new ad optimized for that keyword then update my landing page and make plenty mention of that keyword?
Then will my still-inactive $5 keyword eventually drop in price after this robot crawls the page again?
With this last business of rating the landing page, I haven't had a single keyword go inactive, and none of these sites have a PR higher than 5, most lower. (In my own experience, PR means absolutely nothing, since I have sites with PR0 which rank number one or two for every keyword that matters) But my CPCs ARE going down and my CTRs are going up. So it's plus for me.
Of course all that could change overnight. I know that, and accept it. I can shut down all my accounts and move somewhere else overnight as well. I don't expect any guarantees from Google, and I don't guarantee they're going to keep my business either.
I have made some good $$$ bidding on competitor kewywords...Now, since my ad text doesn't mention the competitor, or the landing page, I guess my quality is lower.
But, what about comparison shopping? Wouldn't google be eliminating options by discouraging competitors from bidding on other competitor keywords and therefore limiting relevant options of maybe getting a product at a cheaper price with a competitor?
For example someone shopping for shoes...
If you optimize your landing page, you may see the minimum CPC reduce once the page gets crawled. Your page will be crawled on a regular basis, so optimizing a page to the way google likes will give a quick turnaround in prices.
I raised the issue about variations and misspellings and she will talk to the tech team about that and give me feedback.
I specifically spoke about one phrase that had a max CPC of .29, had an average of CPC of .14, and a CTR of 4.7% which now is a $5 keyword. The keyword is a variation of a merchants URL "widgets com" So I wanted to know how I could optimize for "widgets com" because I already get the person to where they want to go.
And she said with my example that I have to pay the $5/click and if I achieve the same CTR, the price will decrease over time...That is rediculous...lol..Pay for a $5 keyword to get it back down to $.12 eventually?
I had a lengthy chat with my rep yesterday and it seems like the main factors are that things are related.
your page is related to the keyword you are buying, that is related to the ad copy, that is related to the ad group, which fits into the campaign.
discount blue widgets(keyword)
Buy Blue Widgets
Shop now and save
at the Widget shop.
widgetshop.com (adcopy)
widgetshop.com/bluewidgets.html(landing page)
blue widgets (adgroup)
widgets (campaign)
I am guessing that if you look at their keyword suggestion tool, for the page you want to send someone to, you will be able to pull the keywords that they think your page is about, and should pass "quality score" checks if you purchase those terms, as long as the ad copy fits what you are trying to do.
Suppose I am running 200 different ads? I can't do 200 campaigns...You can't do that many campaigns.
Think of why they may do this?
If you just put your max of 2000 keywords that are not related together in an adgroup, and write a broad ad that targets them all, that is a pretty poor way of organizing them, from both a management standpoint as well as theming standpoint. I think
Back in the day they said to use adgroups to organize and help ads show up in the content network. I am guessing this is along the same path.
Don't get me wrong, I dislike the system and am seeing 100's of terms switched to inactive, but I am not seeing as much on some of my newer better organized accounts as I am on the older / clunkier ones. I would love to see adwords roll back about 2 years to the exact match days (c:
Of course it could just be the min bids were totally random. That would also explain it :(
Let me explain. For 2 years now I have used the same landing page for my campains... index.3.htm
A month ago I implemented some php tracking scripts so I turned my index3.htm page into a "meta refresh" page that now forwards to 3.htm
My question now is.... is this spider only spidering my "meta refresh" page or is it following through to my 3.htm
I'm trying to explain the decline in my account lately but it started way before this new spider......
Just curious if anyone has an opinion...
As a side note all these changes from the last few months are KILLING us. Untill October we were spending 15K to 30K a month on adwords for the last two years... Looks like December will be around 4K
heyday
It does appear that the spider is looking for the keyword/phrase on the landing page.
Problem there is you have a computer doing this, not a human. One product line I advertise has $50-$100 items which I really care about selling. Those bids remained in the 20 cent range where I am happy.
There is also a similar $15.00 line of goods that I felt obliged to include on the site. I had a different
AdGroup for the cheaper items and every one of those keywords is "Inactive" asking $5.00 & up.
It appears to be the phrasing on the page that is "throwing" the spider. Any 8 year old could read the text and interpret it properly, but a computer is lost:
Example 1:
---
Finally, we offer the green widgets
Click Below for the:
Small Size
Large Size
----
Now small "small size green widgets" or "large size green widgets" ask outrageous bids. The other expensive products had a complete enough description on a single line to allow them to continue to show uninterrupted.
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Noticed the same problems with numbers and synonyms
I might list a "one propeller widget" on my site and/or in my ad.
Example 2:
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"one propeller widget" will ask a low bid, but "1 propeller widget" or "single propeller widget" would go inactive.
The spider clearly appears to travel without a Thesaurus. An obvious synonym for one of my products, again known to any 8 year old, was rendered inactive in every AdGroup that it appeared in.
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So what is the answer? Especially with synonyms which is the essence of success in AdWords, thinking of the different variants searchers might use to find your product.
Clutter the page with all possible synonyms repeated?
Stuff your ALT tags?
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I thought the more recent trend in SEO was that if one created a page that visitors found attractive, it's likely that search engine spiders would find it similarly attractive. Moving in the other direction will only encourage spamming tactics.
Israel
It does appear that the spider is looking for the keyword/phrase on the landing page.
It doesn't rely on that.
Outside of the meta description and some alt tags on the bottom navigational menu (e.g. "about us") the homepage my ads link to has no text at all on it.
None of my keywords have had their minimum bid requirements changed. Avg CPC, impressions, position, and CTR have stayed in their normal ranges.
(The page also places highly on a number of keywords for our space. Google's algorithms have obviously gone quite a bit beyond text.)
FWIW - it is commercial ecommerce rather than informational content.
It must be a mammoth task to go around to each ever-changing landing URL and give it a quality score that can be used in conjunction with determining keyword value. In fact, out of hundreds of AdGroups in my campaign, each day I find AdGroups that had been "clean" and now suddenly have a dozen keywords flagged.
They can't be doing it real time. For the heck of it, I set up an AdGroup using my usual keywords with a destination of www.eeexaaaammmppllee.com and nothing was flagged.
The way I envision your landing page based on your description of it, a banner or Flash is doing most of the "talking". I don't expect you to give out any "secrets", but think to yourself, what about your page warrants a high quality score?
I'm glad you didn't suffer from this surprise. For that matter except for the first day when I found some words I cared about were missing the mark for lack of a nickel, I didn't really lose much either.
FWIW, perhaps part of all the secret algos is that only a certain percentage of ads/pages are checked rather than each and every one as we've been led to believe. Much to my chagrin, I had a new ad running for about 2 months with a typo in the URL. It always went to "page cannot be displayed". I found that myself.
I've read of people losing most all of their keywords, folks like you losing none and me kind of in-between. Hopefully, it will normalize soon. Someone referred to this landing page quality score as a program "running in the dark" (and at a terrible time of year for many). I believe there is some truth to that and that is not meant in any way to disparage your good fortune.
The question of the day is that if, over time we figure out how to improve page quality scores, how soon can we expect to be re-spidered? Much of AdWord's appeal has been the immediate results.
Israel
I certainly don't wish this on you Cerny, but is there any chance that the spider simply hasn't gotten to your page yet?
Anything is possible. But, since the page ranks well on organic listings for many related keywords I'd be surprised if we have any problems. Google is able to classify and rank the page in their organic listings for relevant keywords, so why would they have any problems ranking it for paid ads?
The way I envision your landing page based on your description of it, a banner or Flash is doing most of the "talking". I don't expect you to give out any "secrets", but think to yourself, what about your page warrants a high quality score?
No, there's no Flash. Its just jpg/gif. Its ecommerce - think homepages like Victoria's Secret, JCrew or the Gap.
As far as secrets, I don't have any. We've made no attempts to optimize the site for search engine rankings.
As far as what warrants a high quality store - its the content of the site itself. If someone searches on our keywords and clicks on our ad, they find exactly what they set out to. There's no ambiguity.
Big spenders don't want to get into details. They just want to lay down the big bux and expect results.
If you're senior management and you suddenly find your company held hostage by some lowly content developer who misused some meta tags which wreaked havoc with your AdWords listings - don't you think you're going to be pretty pissed off with your AdWords Rep?
We've made no attempts to optimize the site for search engine rankings.
Well that's good to hear. With SEO trends changing all the time (more inbound links - no, less inbound links, etc), that's what I'm hoping for too. My sites have been attracting people and Google should like that too. Like to keep it simple, straightforward and honest.
There is still something "wacky" going on with the page quality score as many can attest to. On the same page, I'll have 2 or more cells with different products of the same nature, but the same layout. Google will "pick on" a few keywords for one ad and demand a ridiculous amount while the other ads are cool.
They're still testing the darn thing as far as I'm concerned and they picked a rotten time to test.
I am looking into the possibility of HTML errors that might be throwing off the spider.
Israel
If Goog relied on looking at the content of this type of page then they wouldn't find anything but images.
iPo
