Google Adwords Changes Top Position Formula
Filed Under Google, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click, Performics, Quality Score, Search Engine Marketing | Comments Off
Google announced this morning to Adwords advertisers that they are going to change the formula used to determine whether your ad is placed in the top positions above the search results. Up until now, this has been determined by “Quality Score and your actual CPC, which is determined in part by the bids of advertisers below you.”
Ads that are placed above the search results generate a much higher volume of clicks when compared to those placed on the right side of the search page. The clickthrough rate is also much higher if your ad takes the top position, but the conversion rate is not always as good. Top positions generate a lot of impulse clicks that are less likely to convert into a sale. Is Google planning on moving more people into the top positions? They describe the change as follows:
With this new formula, instead of considering your actual CPC, we’ll consider your maximum CPC bid, which you control. This means that your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you. Therefore, if you have a high quality ad, you now have more control to achieve a top position by increasing your maximum CPC.
Your actual CPC will continue to be determined by the auction, but subject to a minimum price for top spots. The minimum price is based on the quality of your ad and is the minimum amount required for your ad to achieve top placement above Google search results. As always, the higher your ad’s quality, the less you will pay. And you will never be charged more than your maximum CPC bid. [read more]
The mention of “minimum price” says it all. Google is going to start setting a baseline max CPC for all ads that get listed in top positions. This is possibly as a result of the new information that Google now has access to with it’s recent purchase of DoubleClick/Performics. Many fear that as Google is able to follow each search all the way to the checkout process they will want to raise prices to compensate for those earning an extraordinary ROI. Could this be happening already?
It is not likely that they have already integrated conversion and ROI data into what they demand for click prices, but that situation might not be too far off. Click prices are going to continue to rise as they have for the last several years.
Yahoo Search Marketing Launches Quality-Based Pricing
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, MSN, Quality Score, Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search Marketing, adCenter | Comments Off
Yahoo just announced that they will begin offering discounts on clicks from their Sponsored Search and Content Match network of websites. They are going to discount clicks based on the quality of traffic their search affiliates and content network websites provide. They are calling this “quality-based pricing“.
“Quality” is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites. Discounts will be automatically applied to your account.
Apparently click discounts will start taking place today and they will be automatically credited. No changes by the end user are necessary. We will all begin receiving a discount on clicks. Who can complain about that? How significant that discount will be remains to be seen, but I hope some readers will post their experiences in the comments.
Those who extensively use the content network and Yahoo search affiliates will likely see the lion’s share of the discounts. Yahoo is recognizing that their search affiliates and content network do not provide the same level of quality that the standard search results offer.
Everyone who has done any significant search marketing already knows this, but it is interesting that Yahoo would come right out and admit it. I think it is a good move in the direction of greater transparency. Yahoo is continuing to roll out improvements to their Panama platform. Preliminary results are good, but whether or not they will increase market share remains to be seen.
I find myself thankful that Google is not the only game in town. Competition is good for everyone. Now if MSN could just get their search marketing platform in order, we might see some serious innovation.
Got Quality Score Optimization?
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Google, Google Adwords, MSN, Online Advertising, Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Yahoo, Yahoo Search Marketing | 1 Comment
Mike Jones with Pepperjam Search just made a blog post that is right on the money. This is hardly surprising as Pepperjam has been at the forefront of affiliate marketing and search engine marketing as long as I can remember.
As we have discussed on this blog, affiliate marketers have been scrambling to regain their Google paid traffic ever since Google implemented it’s infamous quality score algorithm. There is no fighting it. The quality score algorithm is here to stay. Mike is pointing the way search engine marketing is now headed.
Search Engine Marketing is Dead…at least as we have come to know it in the past. The days of bid power have dwindled, and a time of synergy has emerged. Synergy between account structure, keyword bids, ad copy and landing page quality is now the undeniable recipe for search success. Never before has a thorough understanding of the mechanism or funnel of search been more important. In fact, not being an expert on the various pieces of search will leave you in a constant state of bewilderment: Why can’t I get to the top of the listings for my best converting terms? Why does the chart mapping my ROI show a continued movement toward higher CPC’s and less profitability?
The answer is easy…its called Quality Score Optimization (QSO), and it’s the only way to professionally approach search engine marketing in 2007.
The problem many smaller search engine marketers face is the amount of testing it takes to optimize a paid search campaign with QSO. Paid search is no longer the easy entry point for those who know nothing about SEO. Search engine marketing is going the way of SEO. SEM’s will have to chase after Google’s newest algorithm, which like their natural one, will likely continue to change.
Search engine marketing is an ever changing landscape. At times we get a glimpse over the horizon and see where we are headed. Mike Jones at Pepperjam Search just had one of those moments and shared it with us all.
Give Affiliates Landing Pages on an Alternative Domain
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Brand Name Bidding, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Yahoo Search Marketing, adCenter | Comments Off
Affiliates and affiliate managers have been distraught by the problems caused by the display URL policy Google implemented, what seems like ages ago by now, in January of 2005. Google stated:
With this new affiliate policy, we’ll only display one ad per search query for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL. This way, users will have a more diverse sampling of advertisements to choose from. As always, your ad will be displayed based on its Ad Rank for given searches, which is determined by a combination of your ad’s maximum cost-per-click (price) and clickthrough rate (performance).
The rest is history as they say. Many PPC affiliates lost their bread and butter virtually overnight. Ever since, affiliate managers have had to closely guard the use of their domain as a display URL, because if they didn’t their affiliates would outcompete them for the one PPC spot available for each search.
Some affiliate programs have just prohibited the use of the keywords that the in-house search engine marketing team uses. Under this model, the affiliates are allowed to use the remaining keywords and variations. But that has caused trouble with broad matching, and it requires using the prohibited words as negative keywords. Unfortunately, many affiliates are unaware of how to do this. So, affiliates get a bad name for bidding on keywords they are not supposed to be bidding on. Affiliate managers get frustrated and the search engine marketing team is livid.
Now if we fast forward to the most recent “slap” Google has given to affiliate marketers, we have to talk about landing page quality score. Now Google is not only interested in the CTR, ad copy, trademark use and display URL; they are also interested in the content of the landing page. Many believe, and I have to agree with them, this goes beyond just the landing page. Google Adwords now evaluates your entire site and gives it a quality score based on the relevancy of the content to the keywords you are trying to buy. The end result was that affiliates who were enterprising enough to develop landing pages so their display URL would be different from the merchant they are promoting, again lost a majority of their PPC traffic overnight. Google called affiliate landing pages “doorway pages” and expressed the opinion that they brought down their overall user experience.
The simplest solution I see to this problem is for affiliate programs to start buying a single domain to host landing pages specifically for use by affiliates for PPC marketing. The landing page would not be considered a “doorway page” by Google if it was owned & operated by the merchant and it did not have any affiliate links on it.
Now affiliates would have to compete for that one display URL but it would not interfere with any in-house search engine marketing by the merchant. This method would also help eliminate competitors from the results by preserving top spots on the search results pages for in-house and affiliate efforts.
Let me know what you think.
Google Penalizes New Adwords Accounts
Filed Under Google, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Search Engine Marketing | 1 Comment
I just finished reading a fascinating blog post on how Google Adwords penalizes new accounts by making them bid higher to establish a “good history”. For new advertisers to Adwords, or for any new account for that matter, this means you might have to overbid and lose money to get the account established with a good history, before you actually see any returns. I am sure that many new advertisers have been completely put off by this because they setup a new account and get started, but they see no results. If you bid too high you get no ROI. So, when you open a new account you have to bid high for the first few weeks, to establish a good history, even if you end up losing money. In the long run the increase in the quality score on your account should make up for this by lower click prices.
Thanks go out to Mind Valley Labs for running this test, proving the importance of account history in Google Adwords. This is something a lot of us have suspected for a long time. Read the full post: Shocking Results! How New Google AdWords Advertisers Get Crushed (Test Results Are In!)