I'll be as clear and specific as I can - Your conclusion that the AdWords quality score/rating system is flawed is incorrect. You've provided an statistically insignificant amount of data to declare an entire system flawed. There are billions of queries and millions of ads - 30, 60 or 100 examples means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Regarding "personal attacks", check my history here. I've rarely if ever attacked anyone in my 2+ years here. I'm telling you you're wrong and your conclusions are based on faulty, incomplete data. If you consider that a personal attack so be it. There's a difference between attacking and disagreeing. My opinions on the subject are based on years of real world marketing experience and millions of dollars spent directly on PPC. From what I can tell your entire theory is based on a a few hours of searching and a few casual observations. This is starting to remind me of your recent "factual" thread where you indicated that inbound links and page size were impacting adwords traffic delivery. You seem to have a habit of jumping to incorrect conclusions, telling everyone else they are wrong, and then moving on. added: Google makes it very clear that what you're willing to pay is a factor in the ranking system. https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6300 "An ad's position is based on its Ad Rank, which is determined by your keyword or Ad Group's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) times the matched keyword's Quality Score. For the top positions above Google search results, however, we use your ad's actual CPC to determine its position."
This doesn't really at all explain what's been found. Leaves more questions then not (as expected). At best this says, every advertiser found on the engine results can potentially be fully irrelevant to what you are searching for. Which would directly conflict with "Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction." - at least that statement. But then if you said, quality DOES have some control over the 'top position' than the question is .. which is it? Paying more, quality, or both? & then i'd continue... regarding the thread you linked to. it is possible i was incorrect. but no one much like here has an explanation as to why a crap-quality page could possibly pull in the amount of traffic it does. people were flat out refusing to believe the level of which the lack-of-quality the page was. the links were really the only conclusion i could come to. for that specific niche size does matter, ask anyone who's looking
I read that as price plays a role in placement that is at least equal in terms of importance to quality - which to me offers the answer as to why some less than relevant ads can be found on the Google results and the content network - becuase people are willing to pay for them to be there. Wasn't that the issue raised in the onset of this thread? My experience leads me to belive that to be successful you need both. I've run tests where I have bid $75 - $90 per click in spaces where I knew that was FAR FAR above the current bids...and guess what...I didn't get the top spot. Granted I didn't let those campaigns run for months but to me that did demonstrate that you can't simply buy your way to the top.
You know, the wording of this shit is no coincidence. If it is in fact equal importance then don't you think they'd say that? what disadvantage would have there been if they had just said that? None. They don't say that for a reason. If you can't buy your way to the top. Then how are ringtone sites doing it.
I'd say it's for the same reason they don't get specifics in other areas of their business - the minute they say "here is exactly how we do xyz" there would be instant exploitation of xyz. That combined with the fact that G' gets paid while we experiment trying to figure out what counts and what doesn't Without looking at a specific example I would say with combination of quality/price - or in the case of the content network - price and "remnant" space. By remnant I mean Google would rather show a cheap ringtone ad than nothing at all - and in the ringtone space people are pretty much bidding on the entire dictionary.
What we have done here, is made a full circle. Except for the fact that i can point out countless examples where people WOULD be bidding for that (any) spot, and all that is showing up is a ringtone site (or ebay, or a calling card etc..)
I'm actually right in the same place I started Sure, but you don't have access to their (the advertisers who's ad should theoretically be there) budget, geo, ad delivery (smooth vs asap) negative keywords and other advertiser side factors that could be preventing display of a more relevant ad. I also manage ad serving for a few major sites and we set things up in a similair fashion. Ads are basically assigned a priority and parameters. We basically tell the ad server "serve this ad until you can't, then server this one, then this one, then this one, etc" until we get to the end where we're basically serving "filler" because we're out of "good" ads to show.
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/9472/scotlandaj6.png Explain this. This is a domain that many people here are already aware of & filtered off their site. Or this http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/8594/australiawm8.png Or this http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/9038/vietnamio1.png Or maybe you'd like more?
If you think you're last response answers that ^ you're wrong. If you are going to chop up the above ^ (& more) to some kind of bs coincidence then so be it. But i'm not here to deal with persons who have a one-sided no-explanation stance on things. What i have presented here, and what i've said before, is still valid.
Ok, this will be last time I explain how adwords works. We've already covered similiar examples in this thread. From the above; Link 1 - the bagpipes ad is most likely a result of an advertiser using broad match keyword and expanded matching is kicking in. Links 2 & 3 - advertiser bidding on australia/vietnam news and using dki to create the ad. The ad probably has a low quality score and is only being displayed because there are no ads that can be displayed that are more relevant. They might only be showing because their quality score is being reevaluated. When a keyword is inactive for search due to a poor quality score here's the text adwords users see: "Inactive for search keywords have a Quality Score and Max CPC too low to trigger ads on searches for Google or the search network, but they remain active for content impressions. These keywords may occasionally accrue search clicks as we re-assess their quality" My previous reposnse did not answer #1 but in all likelyhood is a perfect answer for 2 & 3. When have I ever said anything about "coincidence"? "One sided no explanation"? Everything you've posted has been explained perfectly. On the flip side, you've yet to explain anything and have offered only slightly more than a few screenshots to the conversation. Is there something you would like explained that hasn't been already? I think your statements come from a lack of understanding of how ad serving (and more specifically adwords) works. Everything you've posted here can be (and has been) easily explained by people who understand the system.
You continue to act like there's nothing abnormal to adwords showing completely irrelevant ads, or in many cases, a dynamic irrelevant ad somehow having a higher rank than a legitimate site running non-dynamic. Or there's an 'apparent' lack of (news) advertisers world-wide attempting to bid on high-demand keywords that have legitimate/relevant/quality sites that w/out question would also pull a higher CTR. I'm hoping this is your last attempt to justify adwords coughing up crap. Your assumptions regarding how long i've dealt with adwords/adsense is laughable. I now question how long you've been using adwords/adsense. As you seem to have little to no recollection as to how things used to be. I can find posts of people who have ~5-10k 'rep' on this site and if you dig it was only less than 2 years ago they were asking questions such as 'how to check pr'. So continue to piss into the wind.
If you havn't already posted this... Try "african slave"-- African Slave Looking for African Slave? Find exactly what you want today. www.eBay.com
IMO, explaining why any specific ad may or not show for a certain search term does not render any criticism of the entire QS process invalid. If this quality score (money score IMO) thing is flawless, I guess we'll never hear about any changes or improvements from now on will we? But, check the search term in the previous post. Yahoo shows a similar ad. MSN... 8 ads.
Yet another post heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. I've done my best to explain how ad serving works, you've continued to provide great discussion such as "I hope this is your last attempt to justify adwords coughing up crap". And now that you've tossed "rep" out there as some sort of indication of my qualifications in this space, well, that says a lot about what you think is important. There's a difference between explaining how something works and justifying something. You think the system is broken, I say it's working as designed - advertisers are in control. Good luck with your crusade to get things back to how they "used to be".
I'd have to agree, AdWords may be showing some irrelevant ads but this is because advertisers are bidding on these keywords as they are entitled to. At the moment if a landing page is assigned a low quality score the ad can still rank for keywords if they pay above the new increased minimum bid. As for questioning GuyFromChigaco's knowledge, you've just got to read PPC Discussions to realise he knows what's he's talking about.