Lately, I've been obsessed with the Google Adwords Quality Score or Adwords QS system. Especially when considering very short tail keywords as discussed in my last post, it's important to educate yourself on what Google actually considers as quality when it comes to not just your landing page but also your very ad text and keywords.

In my search for the answer to such puzzling questions, I've come across a few sites that help put the QS into perspective. Back in August of last year, GrayWolf put it best when he titled a post "New Google Adwords Formula = Just Pay Us More." And from what I've been reading, more or less he's right.

From Google's perspective (I hate thinking this way more than anyone because it utterly debilitates me and makes me feel helpless), they want to do three key things:

1. Maintain their position as internet god
2. Provide an easy and useful experience to users
3. Profit, profit, profit

This makes complete sense. Who doesn't want to profit? I know I do. The problem is that they are telling us "as long as your ad generates enough clicks and/or pays us enough, we'll keep it running and in good positions." Yes, some people might pay less as a reward for really good CTR (Click-through ratio) and still end up in a similar ad position, but it doesn't cushion the fact that someone in the ad right above or below them is simply just paying more to be there. For those of us who can't afford such a luxury, it's completely daunting. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that you could be removed from first or second page results due to this fact or even Google Slapped.

So the next logical step, of course, would be to pony up and pay the piper, right? Instead of cursing at Google for being so unfair, I like to look at this as an opportunity to take advantage of a beautiful system.

As an unnamed Google Expert put it back in May of 2007 in an exclusive interview:

Start overbidding! I am serious! You hit the nail on the head when you shared your shocking results that new Google AdWords advertisers are screwed. They have no history, no good quality score, so they have to bid high to get into the door and stand a fighting chance. You have to start out aggressive and then scale back. Otherwise your campaigns will never get off the ground.

By overbidding, of course, the expert meant bidding significantly more than your minimum bid in order to get over the 24-hour window where Google decides whether you are worthy of maintaining your good standing with a particular keyword. You do this in hopes for a high CTR (counterintuitive, I know) so you can start slowly decreasing your bid down to something manageable and hopefully, profitable.

So this is where we're at as the new marketing generation. It's come down to a price war between advertisers. The great Google has spoken and that's pretty much all there is to it. Don't worry about high-quality ads anymore. Focus more intently on keyword-stuffing your landing pages and overbidding just to slowly adjust your bids back to profit.

On a more personal note, if there's one thing I hate most about Google, it's their customer service. Am I alone when I say I feel helpless when I talk to them? It's not because they scare me. It's just that they're so robotic, as if they're the human form of a help wizard. They have no real authority, either. Essentially, they tell me to view the tips on improving my quality score. Honestly, if the solution to my issues were just that simple, don't you think I'd be calling them with something more important? I thought so. Oh, and if there were one more thing I'd say I hate most, it's that they act as if they have no regard for people who spend $5 to $10k every day. Yahoo, on the other hand, has assigned someone specifically to me and they call ME if anything goes wrong.

Now that is what I call customer service. But in the end, Google is king and we all know it. That shouldn't stop you from dominating your niche, so go out there and kill!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:08 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Strategy, Google AdWords, PPC Engines, Yahoo Search Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.