Vertical Leap Search Engine Marketing Blog - Details

Recently I posted a blog on the new Google Quality Score feature in Adwords. This new system did away with the old style, where by agencies and users had to pretty much guess what state their adwords campaigns were in and what the quality was by using logic and testing within the campaigns, retrieving data and acting upon it. Google promised a new easy to use Quality Score algorithm........

As I predicted and mentioned in my last post the new system was riddled with teething problems and needed time to bed in properly. This had stirred up the PPC Companies and posts of errors and problems came flooding in. 

Hooray the uneasy storm has now past and the calm of a Quality new era begins.....

The new algorithms that have been put into place mean that advertisers will now be given opportunity to move up position rankings in the sponsored links without paying above the odds for the privilege. Google will determine the relevancy and quality of ads an decide where best to place them. Previously impressions and CTR's played the majority part in deciding an ads Quality Score, this however meant that the usual top spot ads received the greatest number of clicks and therefore much higher Quality Scores. Leaving other advertisers bidding for the remaining slots. This function seems to be one step closer to their goal of only showing the most targeted of ads on 1 page.

This has also led to a change in the way Google choose ads for the coloured sponsored search bar at the top of the page. Before now the ads sitting at the top of the page were the only ones who could be moved up into this much sort after position providing they meet the quality benchmarks of relevancy etc. Now the new system can see those ads in lower positions leapfrog these big guns for having better Q'S. Google are rewarding competently built and targeted campaigns over and above the big money bidders. Is the playing field finally leveling as previously shouted about??


What to do?

Well the answer is the same as before keep ads relevant. Make sure that keywords are separated into the most granular of ad groups possible, and keep everything as tight as you can. This may mean test and test again to reach your optimum goal but in the end its your pocket that will benefit from the hard work. Many PPC Companies who are happy to sit back on old campaigns will feel the hit harder and see positions dropped only to be replaced by someone only spending £10 per day. So use your history reports to help and start to climb up that sponsored ladder to success.

It's the first time I noticed it, although it's probably been there forever- the humble watermark that sits in the search box on the Google Analytics Support page:



It indicates the language that you are likely to be searching with, using the "custom search".

What's odd is that when I've logged out of Analytics the search box contains a Cyrillic alphabet watermark:


Before I log in it displays a UK one:

What's odder is that the URL of the Cyrillic one is:
http://www.google.com/coop/intl/uk/images/google_custom_search_watermark.gif
and the UK one's is:
http://www.google.com/coop/intl/en/images/google_custom_search_watermark.gif
...the only difference is the country identifier being replaced with a language identifier (uk or en).

I'd love to know to how or why this happens. Of more interest to me is whether it is a reflection of, or a hint at, how truly difficult it is to serve country-specific content.