Adwords Algorithm changes; domination continues

Announced yesterday on their official AdWords blogspot that the algorithm used in determining a paid ad’s quality score is changing very soon. TechCrunch covered the same story today.

In a continual push for ‘bettering’ their services (including enhancements made to their content network), Google have said that 3 main components in AdWords are changing, in an effort to provide the advertiser with more complete, real-time information that impacts their quality score, and the ability to make it to the front page easier (at a higher cost, of course). In all cases, changes are clearly ‘win-win’ as advertisers get more flexibility and Google gets more money.

• 1. First off, the overall quality score will be ‘more accurate’, meaning that more factors will come into play when determining how effective your ad is, therefore how many more clicks it receives. One noteworthy change is the AdWords blog stating that landing page quality will be evaluated less often.
• 2. Secondly, a nod to the die-hard long-tailers out there, Google have finally stopped budding into an advertisers paid ad strategy by removing the incessant ‘inactive for search’ hold put on keywords deemed ineffective by Google themselves. This will have huge rewards for the advertisers who have esoteric, marginal and longest-of-the-longtail keywords that still make them money, and of course more clicks means more CPC means more money for Google. Google to make a note of stating that this change doesn’t necessarily mean that every query will show every ad available, but they will be allowing more ads through than previously.
• 3. Lastly, Google will replace the ‘minimum bid’ with ‘first page bid’, allowing new advertisers to simply match that bid to get on the first page. Although Google say this CPC should be inline with previous statistical analysis of the average keyword bids, there’s nothing to say that they won’t inflate those prices to incur more clicks on that ad, and ultimately more revenue.

All in all, Google’s changes should make it easier to manage day-to-day AdWords campaigns, but it should be noted how easily Google pull the wool over our eyes by stating new ‘changes’ to get advertisers excited when really they’re simply finding new ways of generating even more revenue more efficiently.