Advertisers Speak On New AdWords Quality Score Algorithm
Last Tuesday night Google announced that the Google AdWords Quality Score Algorithm Update Now Live. They said it would take 3 to 4 days for people to see the full impact. I have let enough time elapse and I figured I analyze a thread to see what happened.
In all honesty, the most active thread, I have found, is the WebmasterWorld thread. The thread is not all that active based, as one would expect with a large algorithm change. Similar to my thoughts on the the feedback on Yahoo!'s quality score change.
I will put out some quotes from those who replied:
Just got another round of QSing, raising minium bids on certain words yet again. This time from 50 cents to $1. Or in another words from barely profitable to wholely unprofitable.
Yes, it's purely a money grab. I have an account with 1250 keywords. Before the update, 700 were great, the rest ok. Most of the 700 were under 5 cents. Now, about 750 are great but the minimums have risen to 5 cents, so our QS improved overall but so did the cost. About half the oks have dropped to poor. Also, you will notice that the increments start at 5 cents. We no longer have minimum bid at price in between 5 cent increments. So greats are at 5 cents, ok, are 10,15,20,25,30 and poors are at 40,50,1.00,2.00,5.00. So maybe the algorithm does work better at identifying relevance but the minimums have been cranked up. They will keep doing this until they see a significant move away from adwords and then pull back. They are trying to find the advertiser base gouge limit.
15% of keywords went 'inactive' with a doubling of min bid. QS still 'ok'. However, ad still shows in #3 slot. I can't tell anything anymore about the state of my campaign keywords.
No reason to up min bid from $1 to $5 when the keyword is totally relevant to ad, landing page and website topic.And these are keywords that convert the best... and no wonder!
But honestly, I thought I see a rush of posts this Monday, with tons of complaints. I have not seen that.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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rustybrick in Google AdWords at February 27, 2007 8:06 AM
Comments (4)
Comments
hi,
It's a mystery to me too. One of my clients is a victim of this update: half of the words doubled in minimum CPC, even those with an average CTR of over 2%. What's more: the singular version of the word gets QS excellent, while the plural version gets OK (=dearer). I have the impression that this update punishes the low cost keywords...
Posted by Beatever at February 28, 2007 16:19