Search Engine Watch Forums

shor · #1 12-08-2005

Wow, AdWords is now factoring in landing page content into the AdWords Quality Score equation!

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2005/12/...ity-score.html

Quote:

Today, we started incorporating a new factor into the Quality Score -- the landing page -- which will look at the content and layout of the pages linked from your ads.
...
Advertisers who are providing robust and relevant content will see little change. However, for those who are providing a less positive user experience, the Quality Score may decrease and in turn increase the minimum bid required for the keyword to run.

This is positive news for good PPC managers, since deep-linked pages with excellent content will receive a boost in relative Q-Score compared to the competitor with a single homepage destination URL across their entire campaign.

farees · #2 12-08-2005

Quote:

This is positive news for good PPC managers, since deep-linked pages with excellent content will receive a boost in relative Q-Score compared to the competitor with a single homepage destination URL across their entire campaign.

A lot of B2B marketers just use a single landing page with call to action on the same page such as a registration form to download a white paper or a demo. These landing pages generally have very minimal or no navigation at all. So I don't think the deep-linked page theory can affect the quality here. If the content is highly relevant and the landing page is properly designed by frequent testing methods, it will automatically lead to good CTR, thus getting higher rankings.

- Farees

sem4u · #3 12-09-2005

Nice find. I am fine with all this but I would like to know exactly how a landing page is measured. Is this done manually or automated?

Also, things like this need to be flagged up in accounts. Not everyone reads at the blog and it isn't linked directly from accounts (that I know of).

fulton savage · #4 12-09-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by sem4u

Nice find. I am fine with all this but I would like to know exactly how a landing page is measured. Is this done manually or automated?

I think its safe to assume the content will be evaluated the same way G indexes pages for search relevancy--or maybe there is no additional screening, but rather G's data on that page (that it has already) is just factored into the algorithm.

AussieWebmaster · #5 12-09-2005

This is such a load of.....

http://www.smart-keywords.com/2005/1...g-pages-to.htm

I am finally ready to move on... PPC that has landing pages as an impact on cost... please why not factor in the personality of the advertiser....

fulton savage · #6 12-09-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

This is such a load of.....

http://www.smart-keywords.com/2005/1...g-pages-to.htm

I am finally ready to move on... PPC that has landing pages as an impact on cost... please why not factor in the personality of the advertiser....

AW I've learned so much from reading your posts here, but I am puzzled with this reaction. Why isn't this a good thing for those of us that have our acts together? I read this email from AdWords this morning and was thrilled because I know my landing page will help my ad placement.

I agree that keeping AdWords customers in the dark about charging schemes is pretty shady, but this move shouldn't hurt the se-savvies, right?

Marcia · #7 12-09-2005

This is certainly a good thing for Adsense publishers who have had to spend excessive time blocking garbage advertisers from their accounts.

B-Double-U · #8 12-09-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcia

This is certainly a good thing for Adsense publishers who have had to spend excessive time blocking garbage advertisers from their accounts.

I have to agree with Marcia. I don't think that this is is targeted at adwords advertisers as a money generating scheme. I can't fathom that they would go to these great lengths to develop and implement methodologies designed to merely browbeat you into paying more $$$.

If that were the case, why would they drop the minimums? I think it is a necessary evil being used to combat the spammy advertisers and affiliate traffic that clogs up SERPS and generally lengthens the list of competitive advertising. Please don't jump on my case becasue I mentioned "affiliate traffic", because I am in no way referring to the majority of affiliates, merely the ones that use the cookie cutter approach and set up multiple accounts with some of the bigger fish out there, then submit their feed to Frooogle, G base and any other place that will accept them.

Has anyone noticed lately all of the television ads that are coming from the same companies offering "work from home opportunities" or "male enhancement" supplements? What a joke. You know it's a scam, they know it's a scam. The problem is that, without a quality ensurer, it's anyone's ball.

You should look at the bright side of it. Everyone's cost but yours is going up.

.... My assumption of course, is that you are taking the time to follow general best practices instead of looking for a way to beat the system.

Marcia · #9 12-09-2005

Quote:

PPC that has landing pages as an impact on cost

As it should. Please remember that many advertisers are opting in to the content network, and many are specifically requesting that their ads appear on specific sites. In many cases, that may be a cheap way to develop their "branding" for the advertiser, but can be seriously mis-targeted for the sites that they're advertising on and totally useless for users who visit the pages.

I never did click on ads, but I did mouse over and go to the homepages of many sites - a good percentage of which had NO targeted landing pages on their sites whatsoever. For example, a search box to do a search through PPC listings for the same items as the pages visitors arrived from does NOT constitute targeted advertising and hurts everyone concerned - the publisher and the visitor, not to mention degrading the perception of quality of the Adwords/Adsense program itself. It is most particularly damaging to the perception of integrity of the content network.

There have been too many running that are clearly gaming the system, and it isn't fair that they be allowed to do that at the expense of everyone else.

GuyFromChicago · #10 12-09-2005

I think it's great - a step in the right direction without a doubt.

spamfork · #11 12-10-2005

I think in theory this is great move (Thanks Google).

But let us know if we now have to start SEO'ing our landing pages. Is a spider going to look at the title tag on a landing page? The page formatting? We build great landing pages that are in a constant state of rotation.... Will we be penalized if we are constantly rotating pages... Spill a few more beans please.....

Robert_Charlton · #12 12-10-2005

Hmmm.... How is Google in fact checking landing page content? On some client sites I have the landing pages blocked from spidering (using the meta robots tag), because they duplicate other pages on the site and I don't want to worry about duplicate content. Is this now a concern?

B-Double-U · #13 12-10-2005

Robert,

This is the exact question I have and am going through with the developers right now. I hope we aren't about to take a major hit because we are trying to provide a more relevant user experience.

Marcia · #14 12-10-2005

Quote:

How is Google in fact checking landing page content?

Robert, I'm not so sure I'd assume they're checking ALL of them.

Disclaimer - Pure Speculation and Guesswork:

1. It may be that there's a hand check done if there's a complaint received about a particular site.
2. It may be that there's data gathered and analyzed, and then follow-up checking done, on sites they find in publishers' filter lists. The data and statistics are there, they can easily make use of it.

At that point I don't imagine it would be too hard to locate and check out other sites associated with the account if any are found lacking.

3. They may also be checking for sites that exhibit certain characteristics where CTR and/or usage statistics are concerned.

fulton savage · #15 12-10-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcia

Robert, I'm not so sure I'd assume they're checking ALL of them.

To me it seems like Google already has your page's content evaluated because they are Google and thats what they do?

Robert_Charlton · #16 12-11-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by fulton savage

To me it seems like Google already has your page's content evaluated because they are Google and thats what they do?

If it's evaluated, it's been done manually, not by spidering.

Let's just simplify the question and ask whether, in the future, they will want to be able to spider the pages.

B-Double-U · #17 12-11-2005

My real concern is that if we have a dynamically produced page that has different content for different users, that it will be deemed a "cloaked" page or a "doorway" page.

For instance;

I could be selling a red truck and create several ads for that page. The first ad may be produced for people searching for "red 4x4 truck". When the user gets to that page, the page would read this is a "red 4x4 truck" in certain places to coincide with the readers search. The same page may also be viewed by a reader searching for a "red 4 wheel drive truck", at which time the page will be generated with the term "red 4 wheel drive truck" as the headline.

Although these are both synonymous terms, relevant to the product and descriptive of the content of the page, the fact that they are tailored to the user, may seem deceptive, when in fact it is merely to slightly adjust the terminology to to be congruent with the verbiage used by the searcher.

I would feel that this provides a better user experience and would help a conversion level because it has been tailored. I DON'T feel that this is deceptive in any way as long as the terms are still illustrative of the content.

Some people say SODA and some people say POP and some say SODA POP, but they are still taking about the same thing.

Do you think that this is deceptive or do you think G will condone such a methodology?

AussieWebmaster · #18 12-12-2005

Quality scores for Landing Pages do not concern me for myself - I know we will do well moving forward - but as an industry move it is a little worrisome especially as there are human evaluations which like DMOZ eventually will have the possibility of abuse.

St0n3y · #19 12-12-2005

I've got mixed feelings on this. I think Marcia has brought up some good pros. My problem is that this brings PPC marketing too close to optimization marketing, two totally different marketing paths, if you ask me. Optimization requires content, but content is not always required to make the sale. Sometimes, less is more and PPC (used to) allow you to create the "perfect" sales page without worrying about keywords, rankings, etc. That sales page could be 100% graphic, yet still does the job of selling. Now advertisers will have to worry about optimizing the content of the sales page instead of just creating a great page. I understand that those are not mutually exclusive, but sometimes they CAN conflict.

As to the spidering of the pages, I would assume that Google would in fact spider and analyze every landing page, just as it does any page. I would also assume that Google will use a different robot and very well might ignore the robot exclusions for that page. This could still keep it out of the general index.

On the other hand, maybe this is Google's way of trying to eliminate "landing pages" altogether. I would now be more likely to send my PPC ads directly to my main site pages.

AussieWebmaster · #20 12-12-2005

Instead of helping they are just adding more work.

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