All posts tagged Quality Score
Google Now Weighing Landing Pages More Heavily In AdWords
After a test trial that started in August in Brazil, Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, Google has decided to roll out a new algorithm that weighs landing page quality more heavily when calculating an AdWords quality score. As a result, ads that Google determines have a higher-quality landing page associated with them will rank higher for lower cost per click bids.
The impact of this on PPC campaigns is noteable, as businesses need to take landing page quality into consideration much more so than they previously did. Landing page quality was considered by Google in the past, but more as a factor to reject ads or give them a lower quality score. An ad that directed users to a misleading or low quality landing page could be rejected or lowered in quality score, but a good, relevant landing page wouldn’t raise the quality score. With the new algorithm, Google is attempting to ensure that ads within their network link their keywords closely to the content found on the landing pages. Google plans to enforce this by crawling every landing page associated with an ad and using its algorithm to determine a positive quality score.
Google’s new algorithm also means that a business that invests more time in creating a quality landing page pertinent to the ad campaign will be able to reach a larger audience for a lower cost, something any business can appreciate. Google decided to implement this new algorithm as a response to ads they were seeing in their network that were of the same quality as top ranking ads, but had much higher quality landing pages. These ads were being “lost in the shuffle” as ads with lower quality landing pages and often not ranking as high as they should.
Google sees this as the next step in ensuring that advertisers are adhering to best practices when it comes to creating ads and to reward those that have been following best practices already. The changes are expected to begin rolling out in the next few weeks with Google warning that variations in ad position and quality score are likely, but that variations should return to normal within a few weeks.
To ensure that you are following Google’s guidelines for landing page best practices, make sure to read their AdWords support pages and follow their blog for updates.
The Search Wars
Last month saw what seemed to be a significant milestone in the battle for search market share as Bing broke the 30% mark by powering 30.01% of U.S. searches with 14.32% coming from Bing.com and 15.69% coming from Bing-powered Yahoo Search. Google saw its lead decline from 66.69% to 64.42% in just the month of March alone. These numbers, provided by Hitwise seem to indicate that there could finally be a trend towards Google actually having search competition in the near future.
The numbers are essentially the same for Yahoo as they were back in 2005 when Microsoft muscled its way into the search market by launching Bing. However, what may give Google some pause is the fact that Google has seen an overall decline of roughly 10% of market share since the two merged services back in August 2010, a period of only 6 months. While it?s highly unlikely that we?ll see some dramatic sea change in competition within the next year, it hasn?t stopped some from predicting rather outrageous outcomes. Courtesy of Mashable.com, case-in-point:
So by this logic, Google would be overtaken by early next year, which to put it kindly, is bunk. While Bing has made inroads, the merger with Yahoo has ben anything but seamless. News from today puts some of the starry-eyed projections into perspective. From TechCrunch, Yahoo’s search revenue shortfall for early this year continues, and now Microsoft and Yahoo are passing the blame. The numbers don’t look good:
This is the data since Microsoft took over Yahoo?s U.S. search advertising in return for 12% of Yahoo’s search revenues, with the red line indicating Yahoo’s revenue taking the 12% into account. So even though the merger seems to indicate some increase in market share over the last two quarters, the ad revenue has declined substantially. While Bing and Yahoo may claim that adding the human element makes their paid ad relevancy for search terms better, the data seems to indicate that Google’s algorithm (i.e. Quality Score) is still the best method for getting people to click on an ad, and thereby generate revenue. Perhaps any qualms Yahoo had about AdCenter’s performance versus AdWords back when they chose which company to outsource search to was eased by the magic word “scale”. So far, it appears that the “scale” promised by Microsoft hasn’t made up for lesser platform quality.
