Since creating, launching and managing search campaigns (mostly on Google) is how I make my living, I’ve been trying really hard not to blast the hell out of Google for its latest dubious Adwords improvements.
I’m clearly not happy based on some previous blog posts, but I’ve been giving Google the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they really do want to have better search results for their users. Maybe they really are acting in our best interest (as advertisers) when they penalize us for poor quality - even if we don’t think it’s poor. Plus there’s all the information they do give us - like the search query report (*ahem* USELESS) and the ability to have ads up and running instantly (if we don’t mind paying $5.00 or $10.00 for arbitrary quality penalties).
But, well, now I’m mad (based on a series of off-putting emails from one of my reps) and when I get mad, I get snarky. And what are blogs for if not a little snark?
It must be nice being Google. Here’s a fun list.
If I were Google I’d…
- Increase my fees by 100 - 1000% overnight. Then when my clients complained I’d tell them it was for their own good. The fee increase would only be in place until they improved the quality of their business model. I wouldn’t give specifics on how to better increase it (don’t want anyone cheating!) - but I’d develop a list of guidelines they could painfully try to interpret (e.g., “no blue in the logos, make sure you link to cool stuff on your home page, don’t use the word “cheese” EVER, etc.”)
- I would consider lowering my fees if the changes had been made to my satisfaction (isn’t that nice of me?). This would occur during my review process which I would claim happened “regularly” (e.g., every one to 360 days).
- I would create an exhaustive database of guidelines and rules which I’d label “help” and direct all clients to this database for every single issue. No one likes customized answers, after all. It’s all about automation!
- I would begin referring to my services as “self-serve” any time a client below a certain fee level asked for additional attention or assistance. In fact, I would tout this as a key differentiator to my services compared with other, less popular and/or wonderful providers. Persistent questions would be met with persistent responses by me (or a fleet of mindless sales drones I’ve hired) directing questions to my growing database of canned “help” files.
- I would assign a team of people to my largest accounts and make sure that they stay happy and well-served. It’s in my best interest to grow the largest accounts, after all. It also serves the greater good because when big corporations are happy, everyone is happy! Therefore I would send all the big clients refrigerators, t-shirts, lava lamps, ipods, towels and other goodies covered with my logo (and my love).
- I would be very courteous and professional with people who complain about my new policies and would once again restate that they’re the ones who benefit from these changes in the end. After all, they’ll have a better business model and happier customers. They’ll be thanking me!!
- If my clients decide to take their business elsewhere, I would shake my head sadly but wouldn’t try to stop them. There’s always more clients, after all. Plus, I am ME and I own the market. The complainers would likely be just jealous of my success anyway.
In the words of the immortal Daffy Duck, “Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I’m rich.”
October 26th, 2007
Sometimes I long for the good old days of paid search, when GoTo.com was the only player, I was one of the only people who knew about them (or so it seemed) and bids started at just .01.
I knew it was too good to last, but prices continued to remain affordable for a long time and even when Google first introduced its veil of secrecy (otherwise known as the “quality score”), I continued to have faith in paid search as the great equalizer of online advertising - that is, it was cheap to start up and almost anyone could benefit from it regardless of the size of their budget. Not no more.
Barrier to entry
In July 2006, Google introduced it’s a new quality score algorithm which dictated some guidelines to advertisers about what Google considers a “useful” destination URL (or not). In fact, I avoided the term “landing page” deliberately because it’s currently going the way of the “doorway page.”
The short-short of it is, that if Google’s automated adBot finds the quality of your keywords lacking (either due to lack of good ad copy or a less-than-useful landing page) you get “slapped” with a minimum bid requirement of $5.00 to $10.00 (in rare cases it can also be about $1.00) which means your keyword remains inactivate and out of the game unless you raise your minimum bid.
Now, fast forward to August 2007 - Google introduced a new and improved Adwords “top placement formula” which they claim gives advertisers more control over achieving a top position in the paid search results, because placement is now dependent on minimum bid and quality score, than on what other advertisers are bidding and actually paying per click for the same keywords. Clear as mud? Check out Gray Wolf’s lucid analysis of the new formula for some clear (and disturbing) insight as to why this is BAD.
A tangible example of why this sucks
I recently restructured one of my client’s accounts because many of the terms were being slapped with $5 to $10.00 minimum bid penalties. I rewrote ads so they were painfully customized, I incorporated language in all the ads to match the landing pages (which were developed specifically to compliment the search campaign) and I happily relaunched everything last week. The main change I made to the keywords was I switched them from Exact to Phrase match because I figured the ads were more customized and would do more screening, so why not go for more volume?
Yesterday I logged into the new account and found that 90% of the terms had been penalized for low quality - again, these were the exact same terms as in the old account with the exception of match type. The ads were more customized and the landing pages had not changed. The campaign was essentially crippled - burning at about 1% of what we’d been spending prior to the restructure.
I activated all the disabled keywords by raising bids the required $5.00 to $10.00 and went back a couple of hours later only to discover that the client’s CPC was, you guessed it, $5.00 or $10.00 - even though many had little or no advertiser competition.
So I paused the campaign and restarted the old one. My old bids, for the most part, have remained intact although the best-converting term is now disabled due to poor quality. I have a call with the client today and I’m going to recommend reviewing landing pages as our next step in trying to combat this issue.
What’s a search planner to do?
I’ve written to Google multiple times to try to get some clarity over this issue and explain that my client is not an affiliate, or a spammer, or someone without a substantial product. In fact, they are one of the biggest publishers of technical and IT books in the world.
Google keeps pointing me to the landing page guidelines and essentially saying it’s up to the client to improve the quality score so we can lower the bid. If they want to bid on the terms that are being penalized, they have pay the big bucks.
I’m on a quest to see if it is possible to raise the quality score based on the nebulous information Google provides to advertisers via the Adwords help and blog. In the meantime, I think the best way to get the CPC down for search is to reallocate funds to Yahoo and MSN, and that’s what I intend to recommend to this client.
Oh, and in case you think I’m just a raving lunatic with a conspiracy theory - Microsoft apparently had this same exact thing happen to them for the term “hotmail” which was being directed to Hotmail’s login page.
And while this new approach may leave advertisers SOL, it’s certainly a happy ending for Google, whose Q3 2007 earnings rose 49%.
Update: Apparently Google has decided to throw us a bone. Thanks to Kevin Gibbons for posting about this on Sphinn.com.
October 24th, 2007
