Hot off the forums from WebmasterWorld, Google AdWords Pricing Change Goes Into Affect posted at 4:30AM (est) a member refreshed his AdWords control panel to see:
We've simplified our keyword status system. Your keywords will now either be active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). Quality remains the most important factor in your keywords' performance. Each keyword will now have a minimum bid that is based on the quality of your keyword and ad text. If your maximum CPC doesn't meet this minimum bid, your keyword will be listed as inactive.What you should do differently: If a keyword is listed as inactive, improve its quality through optimization, delete it, or raise that keyword's maximum CPC to the minimum bid indicated. (Raising the bid will re-activate the keyword.) If your keyword is active, you don't need to do anything.
AdWordsAdvisor at WebmasterWorld said that it was not live at that time, but was a slow roll out.
Sharp eye you have there poster_boy. ;)The changes have not actually launched yet - and what you are seeing is some limited pre-launch testing as we get things ready for prime-time.
The changes will relatively launch soon, and as mentioned previously, we'll notify everyone by email when they do occur - and of course I'll post here as well.
In the meantime, for those few that do see the 'new' pages, please know that you are seeing testing, that your account will run as normal during the testing, and that any changes you make in the 'test' interface will be saved.
My apology in advance for any confusion that this testing may cause.
But it seems as if this will be live really soon, any questions, jump over to the forums.
