New Adwords Quality Crack-down Algo coming

Have you guys heard there's a new Adwords Quality Score Update coming?

ReveNews - Scott Jangro

"Yesterday, google announced via their Inside Adwords blog that there is another update coming in the next few days. Not only have they updated the algorithm, but these quality scores will now affect what shows in their content network (Adsense)."

http://www.revenews.com/scottjangro/2006/11/another_adwords_quality_score.html

 

It was just a matter of time IMO.

Full Post.

 

Do you think it is the end of AdSense arbitrage?

 

I do not see how this can end AdSense arbitrage. This will affect advetisers, not publishers. All those made for adsense sites will be more than happy to receive "more targetted higher paying ads"

 

Anything that has a financial impact on advertisers will also have an impact on publishers.

 

I just did an in-dpeth blog covering several sources. Some are happy and think it will clean up the MFA sites others are very worried inlcuding affiliates and publishers.

The UK affiliate forum seems to have some insider info that indicates this will be pretty bad for affiliates and publishers and even merchants that don't have their cart on their own domain.

 

Affiliates will get hit the hardest IMO.

 

How can it help? It seems directly targeted at it.

 

The bad affiliates, yes. Thin affiliates add nothing to the web besides shifting traffic around, possibly in the right direction but it's not like without them the content wouldn't have been found anyway.

Google has such a big influence on the web at large that this will have many impacts beyond just their ad network.

Tighting down further can only improve quality everywhere. I just hope they aren't generalizing their algo's and also hurt legitimate ways of landing page traffic flows.

I'm not worried about my campaigns, I can only see my performance increase if bad performing ads lose out more.

AdWords gets increasingly more frustrating for many 'genuine' advertisers I speak to, maybe this can reverse the trend at least a bit.

 

Affiliates will continue to get hit, even harder. However, I've seen more than a few genuine advertisers hit just like the mfa's and affiliates. Unless adwords can do a better job distinguishing between the two this will have a negative impact on all advertisers.

 

Hmmm, this morning I find in my most successful campaign all my best keywords have gone from 3 cents up to 25 - 40 cents! It's not a MFA site either - just a normal affiliate type of site. All the keywords were very very relevant and had a CTR of over 5%. Bleh, how are you supposed to run a business when google keep moving the goal posts? Can you imagine a TV station selling advertising turning around and telling an advertiser he suddenly needs to pay 10 times what he paid yesterday? Ridiculous.

 

Why is it ridiculous? With your ad you are preventing direct ads to go higher than they are now so Google's user has to jump through more hoops to ultimately find what they could have found with one click.

1. End user gets annoyed with Google
2. Direct advertiser gets annoyed with Google
3. Stockholders worry about Google

Google spiders your landing page and sees it has no added value, is just a thin affiliate so it bumps your minimum CPC up so you eventually stop your ad.

1. End user is happy with Google because they found what they were looking for fast
2. Direct advertiser sees less competition and better ad positions so better performance hence more happy to spend more
3. Stockholders see everybody is happy with Google.

 

haha, I guess I was one of the "bad" guys. I just went from spending $500 a day to $50 overnight. Most of my keywords went from $0.15 to $10.00. I don't blame them - my sites didn't have much for content. Ah well; it was a good run.

 

Lot's of assumtions there. Advertisers aren't griping because they took away their least converting keywords. They are griping over the keywords that have gone inactive and had high CTR's and high conversions - all because of some arbitrary quality score.

To their own admission, they don't claim to know what landing page quality means to everyone, but they are in fact making those judgements. While their intentions may have been to eliminate the low quality arbi/affiliate stuff, they have essentially nuked a molehill and caused a lot of collateral damage.

 

It appears that the traffic is trickling back in, but yesterday it was a very noticable difference (as in, never that bad before)

 

We are benefitting slightly. Some of my £5 min keywords (err no thanks) are now coming back online at decent levels. I do wonder if Google revenues were being dented by their deliberate culling of err, paying customers!

 

Correct, I based my post on this sentence from jof: "just a normal affiliate type of site".

I agree or at least hope that's not going to be the case, hence mentioning before:

"I just hope they aren't generalizing their algo's and also hurt legitimate ways of landing page traffic flows. "

I highly doubt they are so careless as to 'nuke a molehill' - Google wouldn;t destroy their main revenue source willy-nilly like that. I'm confident a lot of behind the scenes testing and research has gone in to this so the assumptions on what makes a good landing page must be valid enough to not harm those that definitely have quality landing pages.

 

.

Some traffic started coming back in from adwords. But it's only about 25% or less of the prev norm. Which obviously means Google will be making about 25% profit from us compared to before.

I'm almost a little glad this has happened because i was just hunting for a reason to stop playing the adwords game anyways.

You had seen my previous threads regarding 'the point of a higher CTR' before. Lower cost was never 'the' nor 'an' issue hence it was locked in @ a specific rate. And still to this day as the CTR climbed and climbed and climbed over (individually and as a whole) ~1000 unique/different landing ad groups there has essentially never been an increase in traffic, or hence benefit to a higher CTR. The reality is, bidding on trash has always brought in more traffic. Which i had been beating myself up with for many months by not doing so by majority. But again, the reality is the campaigns and ad groups i had ran that were bidding on ~random 'trash' consistently brought in more traffic.

In the now year that i have worked and beat myself up over now quadroupling+ (or more) the (individual or as a whole) CTR of my ads. I can honestly still look back and say. There was consistently no benefit at all. a Year ago with a decimal point CTR (as a whole, or individually) i was bringing in just as much traffic, if not very likely more. And i'm dead serious.

I'll never forget that a year ago or so, before i started this 'war' on increasing my CTR by a large amount. I was recieving 800k-1m+ impressions per day. Thus bringing in more traffic.

My site is not an MFA, google has consistently 'hated' me i guess one could assume. I can do a search on google's engine for competitors on anything that i offer. (which i did again last night actually). Consistently find high-ranking trash that offers not even a fraction of the service & content that i provide. This also applies to ads running on their network. My returning visitors speak for themselves.

I hope i have not spoken 'too soon' regarding this new Quality system. However based on yesterday & (so far) todays traffic. It would appear that i have not. It appears i may be 'starting all over' regarding ads/ranking. Maybe it's just me being optimistic i'm not sure. But the traffic is trickling in so slowly. That i do not forsee my adwords being in the same position it was prior, or ever before.

.

 

My low-quality arbitrage and affiliate pages haven't had any negative effects (yet). Actually.. for the last 2 days I've gotten an increase in clicks for a lower cost

 

how to check the traffic of ur site ? i am new here and need guidance plz help me