I have been selling software for 2 years straight. I was spending engouh money to have a Google rep create my ads. CTR at 2.5 - 3%. Then last month, they shut my ads off and said I needed to increase my CPC from .12 to $5.00. I asked why and this is the response I got.

Thank you for your email. I understand you are concerned about the sudden
increase in the cost-per-click of your keywords in the Campaign
I reviewed your account and found that though the
quality review of your site is correct, but your current landing page
quality is very poor. Sites that don't include useful content, products,
and/or services for internet users are often difficult to advertise
efficiently and effectively.

Based on user feedback, we've found that low quality sites lead to a poor
user experience, and unhappy users are less likely to click on AdWords
ads. Also, advertisers with quality sites see higher advertising costs
when they are forced to compete with ads for poor quality sites. AdWords
provides the best results when both users and advertisers have a positive
advertising experience.

According to our review, 'http://www.yoursite.com/' is a poor quality
page and will continue to cause higher minimum bid requirements for you,
and potentially low return on your investment. Therefore, AdWords may not
be the online advertising program for your website or business.

UMMMMMM....I have had over 25,000 downloads of the software plus free tools on my site. I seriously can not believe this! Some little junior (*&(*&(*& is deciding what is good and bad content.

BACKHOME,

We all feel your pain. Some have been hit with this "quality review" hard and others only just slightly. In either case it is difficult to deal with since we don’t fully understand Googles meaning of a "quality" landing page.

To me TV infomercials are terrible... not quality, and offer virtually no valuable information, but they obviously move product because they have been on air for as long as I have had a remote in my hand. Can you imagine the networks telling these infomercial guys, sorry we don’t like your commercial or your product, we're going to charge you 10x the normal rate if you want to continue to run these ads.

In some ways this is what Google is doing. In other ways I can understand what they are trying to accomplish. Remove all the terrible newbie ads campaigns that are jacking up the price for serious advertisers.

The only problem with this is that it just comes off looking like Google wants to suck out as much money from advertisers as possible.


How do you solve this problem?

Human reviews - Too time consuming for their volume and even a human will not understand the nuances of every business.

Automated reviews - Can churn through the volume of sights but can only use formulas to calculate "quality". Try to get a machine to taste 100 beers and tell you which one is the best. Impossible. And now we're back to the optimizing pages for machines instead of our customers.. bad, bad, bad.

Let CTR take care of it?
Perhaps, but CTR only relates to the ad itself, and not the landing page.

CTR and Conversions?
If the visitor converts now that is proof of success. Not necessarily an indicator of "quality", but whatever was advertised was successful in its goal.
Unfortunately, no advertiser wants to give google all their conversion data, and certainly if rank and price where based on conversions many if not all advertisers would spoof their conversions to achieve success.

A conundrum no doubt.

For now I only hope that Google will come out with more details on what they are looking for in a "quality" page. At least then we could determine if their perception of quality is in line with ours, and the end result will be a campaign that attracts and converts visitors.

Discovery

I know of a PPC site that tried to pass itself off as a brand name antivirus company (in both the site url and ad text) but you go to the site and its a mishmash of Google AdSense ads and affiliate links while the only actual content on the site is for an unrelated registry "curing" product. Total garbage site that was spamming the listings and now its gone. I applaud Google for finally getting rid of them.

Though Kim Malone of AdSense said the "Inactive" process was part of the 'quality of landing page' too - on the arbitrage panel this week at SES - when told about landing pages that are absolutely pertinent she sidestepped the issue.

I am of the opinion that adwords is

A. completely prejudiced against affiliates.
B. Wants to get rid of advertisers that do not bid up on high volume keywords
C. Is prepared to lie to get what they want.

So much for their "force for good"

:eek:

My opinion is that Google wants one thing: to make the most money. They do this by providing the best results (ensuring traffic) and maximizing monetization for each search/page view, etc. The reason affiliates aren't allowed to bid multiple times on the same keyword is because their results would turn into crap if they did. Why would anyone keep using a search engine (or at least keep clicking on the paid ads) if many times all ads provided the same content and led to the same or virtually the same destination? Its insane to think that Google doesn't want more competition (and more $$) simply because they "have something" against anybody. The fact is sites that offer no or very little original, relevant content (e.g. affiliates, sites with nothing but AdSense ads, etc.) negatively impact user experience and therefore threaten Google's business.

Hey thats not very PC PPC!

But its the darn truth.

Discovery

I totally agree, but unfortunately, they have tarnished everyone with the same brush and many legitimate and "ethical" sites have been unfairly affected.

I have no doubt that CJ.com and Tradedoubler have seen the impact too.

I am of the opinion that adwords is

A. completely prejudiced against affiliates.
B. Wants to get rid of advertisers that do not bid up on high volume keywords
C. Is prepared to lie to get what they want.

So much for their "force for good"

:eek:

As far as affiliates represent duplicate content and PPC ads - yes they do not like them....

they want to maximize their income for keywords/traffic.... and the inactive actions are a little too broad and hurting many advertisers even beyond affiliates and other arbitragers.

I wouldn't say lie - though not tell us or push other truthful information that distracts us - yes

My opinion is that Google wants one thing: to make the most money. They do this by providing the best results (ensuring traffic) and maximizing monetization for each search/page view, etc. The reason affiliates aren't allowed to bid multiple times on the same keyword is because their results would turn into crap if they did. Why would anyone keep using a search engine (or at least keep clicking on the paid ads) if many times all ads provided the same content and led to the same or virtually the same destination? Its insane to think that Google doesn't want more competition (and more $$) simply because they "have something" against anybody. The fact is sites that offer no or very little original, relevant content (e.g. affiliates, sites with nothing but AdSense ads, etc.) negatively impact user experience and therefore threaten Google's business.

But the broadness of how they are doing it is also costing the legitimate advertisers....

But the broadness of how they are doing it is also costing the legitimate advertisers....

I agree completely. I think a manual review should be done by their editorial department to remove arbitrage sites, irrelevant sites and misleading ads and also to limit affiliates.

Having an algorithm determine a paid site's relevancy and, in turn, their bid price/position is a bad idea in my opinion. So I guess I agree with Google's intentions, but not the current implementation.