Adowrds Quality Score Algorithm update happening now. Otherwise known as a Google Slap.

March 5, 2008 at 12:46 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score

One of my clients notified me this morning that when he logged in this morning all his minimum bids were raised to 10.00 per click. The sad part is that this is one of the best performing campaigns I have ever managed. It does excellent day in and day out. He has more competition now than what he had 6 months ago but we have been able to keep out performing the competition 2 to 1. My point is don’t always assume that it is something that you are doing incorrectly on your end. A lot of the time there are reasons for the bids to be raised while at the same time there are times when the rasied bid is unjustifiable and this is one of those times. Hopefully they will readjust the score ASAP so that the client doesn’t see that much down time.

This has to be one of the most critical areas that Google needs to pay very close attention too. Because in their war against made for adsense websites a lot of innocent advertisers get caught in the crossfire. Below is the chat I had with an Adwords rep after discovering the account had been slapped. Please overlook the Grammer mistakes as this was just a chat.
Chat InformationThank you for contacting Google AdWords. Please hold a moment while we route your chat to a specialist who will help you with your question: “My client xxx-xxx-xxxx just alerted me that all his terms had become inactive and a 10 min bid slapped on all his terms. This is very discouraging as it is one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL accounts I manage. It has been doing phenomenal, excellent. The ads are directly related to the terms, and the landing pages directly correlate to what the ads are saying so why in the heck has this happened? We created a new campaign called Detox that seems to have triggered this and if it is because of that campaign we will delete it to get back to where we were. I have paused the ad groups just a few minutes ago in order to get a chat prompt but that didn’t work so I would imagine that you have a quality score algorithm change in the works. My client just called and confirmed that others are experiencing the same slap as well. My question to you now is: Is he going to have to take a hit on the 10.00 min “.
Chat InformationAlec S has received your message and will be right with you.

Alec S: Hi Craig. Thanks for contacting Google AdWords. I understand you are concerned about your client’s keywords becoming inactive for search. Is that correct?

Craig: I’m concerned that his account has been unfairly hit with the most recent quality score algorithm changes

Alec S: I am pulling up the account right now to have a look.

Craig: it is the best campaign I manage…

Alec S: You wanted to look at the Detox campaign specifically?

Craig: no the other campaigns.
Craig: xxxx
Craig: xxxx ad group
Craig: look at the terms, ad and landing page

Alec S: I am looking at this ad group right now.
Alec S: All of the keywords for this ad group have a poor Quality Score. It looks like that was caused by a landing page quality issue.

Craig: there is no reason why his score should have been moved to poor
Craig: look at the landing page!

Alec S: I am looking at the landing page right now. Did this client make any recent changes to the website?

Craig: there is nothing wrong with it. It is not misleading it is selling the product that was being advertised
Craig: no, this is the same landing page we have been using for the last three months or longer

Alec S: I understand and apologize for your frustration. I am going to escalate this to our Specialist Team so that we can investigate the issue.

Craig: actually I think the page goes back way longer than that.
Craig: Thank you. Please email me when you find something out.

Alec S: There is a chance that it took our system a bit longer than normal to analyze the content on the website. But I will escalate the issue of the landing page quality with our specialists.
Alec S: What is the best email address to reach you at?

Craig: or when it has been reaccessed, he doesn’t deserve to have to pay 10.00 per click for ? how many clicks before it is lowered back to normal, xxxxxx@gmail.com

Alec S: I would not recommend raising the max cpc bid to as high as $10.00 as that is a lot of money to pay per click. We are not asking you to pay that much, it is our system’s way of telling you to change something in order to improve your quality score.
Alec S: I will discuss the landing page with our specialists and figure out exactly what is going on.

Craig: Believe me I know this. Thank you

Alec S: Thank you for chatting in and have a great day!

Craig: will do

If you have an Adwords campaign check and make sure you min bids have not been raised. Google does not send you an email to notify that this has happened.

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Your landing page load time now affects your Adwords Quality Score

March 5, 2008 at 12:18 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score

Yes, we now have yet another metrix that we have to keep tabs on in order to make the most out of our Adwords campaign while trying to keep the costs low. While I understand some of the reasoning behind the move I think it will have a negative impact on legitimate campaigns that may be using video, flash, an online spokesperson and other very effective methods of marketing to the buyer once they have landed on the landing page.

How is your load time graded? From Google Adwords support:

Each of your keywords will receive a load time ‘grade’ depending on the destination URL associated with that keyword:

• If you assigned a keyword-level destination URL to a particular keyword, then the keyword’s load time grade will be based on that URL.
• If you didn’t assign a keyword-level destination URL, then the keyword’s load time grade will reflect the slowest load time among the ads in the ad group.

Note that we evaluate your load time relative to the average in your geographical region.

How can you determine your grade?

You can see a keyword’s load time grade on the Keyword Analysis page. The following information will be available:

• The load time will receive one of two grades. If it’s graded This page loads slowly, your landing page quality and Quality Score will be negatively affected. If it’s graded No problems found, your landing page quality and Quality Score will not be affected.
• You’ll see the number of redirects the user is taken through after clicking your ad. Typically, the more redirects there are, the slower the load time.
• We’ll report the site’s average load time.
• We’ll provide a comparison of the load time for your site versus other sites in the geographic area. Note that your load time grade is determined relative to the average in your geographical area.

How can you improve it?

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.

Here are some tips for improving load time.

• Use fewer redirects.
• Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.
• Do not use interstitial pages.
• Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.
• Contact your webmaster or webhosting provider to discuss other ways of improving your website’s load time.

You can also use Google’s Webmaster Tools (not available in all languages) to graph the average download time for your site. To do so:

1. Sign in to Webmaster Tools with your Google Account login at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview .
2. Click your site if you see it on the page. If not, type in the URL of your website in the Sites field and click Add Site.
3. Select Tools in the sidebar.
4. Click Set crawl rate. Note that you’ll need to have verified your site before you can do so.
5. The third graph will show your site’s average load time.

How big of a problem will this be for those using video and flash on the landing page? Only time will tell.

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Google AdWords Help Center: How do I use keyword insertion? (tutorial)

November 7, 2007 at 8:49 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score

Google AdWords Help Center: How do I use keyword insertion? (tutorial)

Have you ever heard someone mention the term Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)? Well Google has finally decided to spread some light on the subject. They have a full tutorial available and if you are not familiar with the practice I advise you to take a close look at it.

In brief it will allow you to dynamically insert the search term into your ad.

So if your ad says:

Cheap MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players.
cheapmp3.com

You can use DKI to do this:

{keyword:Cheap} MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com

and if the search term that was used was Low Cost MP3 Players
your ad would replace Cheap with Low Cost dynamically when the page loads so it would look like this:

Low Cost MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com

If the search term they use cannot fit into allowed number of spaces for the headline then your default term (whatever is after the colon:) will show in the headline.

Cheap MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com

There are a number of variations that can be used because DKI can be utilized in the whole ad and not just in the headline.

To very important notes. Be careful because you do not want funny looking ads showing. Secondly while this technique will definitely improve your CTR ratio it will actually lower your conversion ratio.

The reason for this is because your headline is matched so well to what the person is searching for you get more browsers than buyers.

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Lower your PPC bid fees by improving your Adwords Quality Score. Part 2

May 9, 2007 at 12:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Google, Adwords, Search Engine Marketing, Adwords Quality Score

In Part 1 we explained what the Adwords Quality Score is and why it is important to your Adwords campaigns. In this second part we are going to explain what you can do to improve your Adwords Quality Score.

The most important improvement you can make is to make sure your landing page reflects what your ad is saying in your campaign. Example, you are a beach product type of vertical. You offer beach products such as umbrellas, hats and beach towels. The adword group advertisement is bidding on the keywords: beach umbrellas and beach products. Your actual ad is promoting a closeout sale on all umbrellas in stock. However you are linking that ad to your main homepage where you are not heavily advertising the umbrella closeout sale making it difficult for buyers/visitors to find that sale. Nor is the keyword rich phrase “Umbrella Closeout Sale” anywhere on the homepage.

What you need to do is create a specific landing page for that promotion/sale/Adwords campaign. You need to promote some of the umbrellas that are available along with pricing and description. It needs to be content rich for the keywords and phrases you are bidding on. This makes it easier for your customers to find exactly what they are searching for quickly and easily.

There are additional advantages for the custom landing pages like tracking the effectivness of the campaign if you do not have sales tracking. Or you can also watch the visitor’s navigation path closer giving you a better idea of how they are interacting with your website after you have lured them there.

The second improvement you can make to your Adwords campaign is to target the websites you want your ad to show on. Google allows websites (Adsense publishers) to allow advertisers to run their campaign on their websites with ease. This is called site targeting and you enable it when starting or editing a campaign. To do this you need to find some suitable partners by searching for them. Here is a trick to help you find sites that are already adsense publishers and offer this option.

You can find adsense publishers that are offering this capability by doing a search like this: beach tips “Advertise on this site”
Even though this is a very specific niche I found an Adsense publisher that is allowing Adword advertisers to pick their website to run their campaign on. Look for the words “Advertise on the site” on the bottom right hand side of the page.

You will have to do some searching but it is well worth the time finding these publishers/websites to run your campaign on. Please take notice though of the website PR value as well as their Alexa ranking when searching.

The third most important thing you can do is some keyword research to determine if the keywords you are bidding on are the keywords people are actually using. Do a search on beach alone and you will discover everything related beach. You can pick up new suggestions that you were not previously aware of. Narrow it down by doing a “beach supplies” or “beach towels” for a more specific set of words and phrases.

I will stop there so not to give you information overload but it really isn’t that hard though. It just takes some elbow grease to find the right mixture for your Adwords campaign to become profitable.

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