From Great Quality Score to Slap in 3 months

[tonyr]

Tweet

There are some really good points being made in this thread.

I think that it is just as risky to switch from doing mainly Google PPC to relying on (mainly) Google SEO. I believe that Yahoo and Live get a fair amount of traffic in the US but get very little in the UK. So Google dominates again.

It can be great to get that "free" search engine traffic but they can switch off the tap at any time. Look at the problems that Ray from Shopcodes is having at the moment with Google search engine traffic.

So you need to diversify your traffic sources to build a sustainable business. As well as SEO and PPC on the 3 main search engines you have: email lists, RSS, links from relevant websites, social networks bookmarks, blog networks, press releases, viral marketing, link bait, creating really great content, offline Marketing (?), all the usual stuff.

The trouble with all of this stuff is that it can be very time consuming and out of your control.

PPC at least is very quick to set up and run and (apart from quality score B.S.)very controllable. You are using money as a tool (in place of time) to make more money. I think that is why big business wants to keep it for themselves and keep the little guy out. With the profits that they make from it, they can afford to pay good writers to churn out content and win at SEO as well.

[Stellar]

I don't quite understand why Google has an issue with comparison sites. Comparison sites defiantly add value to the users by the very nature of what they are doing. They are one of the most useful types of sites around.

The only reason can be that if a user goes to a comparison site, they will find the product /service that they want quickly and easily, rather then searching endlessly in Google, therefore reduce Google's Adwords revenue.

So it is all about dollars and pounds, and nothing about the user experience.

[chrisuk]

Following on from my Geosign post which shows the risks of relying on a single source of traffic, one strategy I am now employing to secure long term traffic is site aquisition in multiple niches. These sites are generally already in Google with traffic and just need doing up.

It is a painfully slow process and expensive but is gradually allowing me to build new organic traffic. The trick is to treat them and further develop them as real sites rather than as SE spam fodder so they last. This is a strategy that might suit some affiliates who have large cash reserves from the good old days but it is a lot of work to scale into hundreds of 'real sites.' But obtaining established sites means you have base traffic from day one, you can for example just stick adsense on them until you get to around to fixing them up.

I have been a 'thin' affiliate in the past, I still have some thin sites but with Adwords at least it seems that even content rich sites are being squeezed and my main worry is that the day comes where you cannot buy the traffic at all so its better to work towards obtaining high volume organic traffic and keep scaling it. In a way you are still paying upfront for traffic but investing in terms of designers, content writers and seo. Then I guess ppc on top of all that wherever you can.

Its not all bad - in the US Yahoo just announced you can ppc direct to merchant so that may come over here. Its Google Adwords that is the problem, too big, too dominant and with an unhealthy influence on income in almost every sector. May their stock fall further!

[andrewshipway]

Exactly. What do you do when you have dominated a search market, and you can't increase revenue any more? Tweak it so you do. Get rid of affiliates, try other ways to increase search queries, which mean more clicks on the google ads.

Getting rid of affiliates could be the first step in the introduction of there own CPA model, which I read about. It makes sense.

I don't quite understand why Google has an issue with comparison sites. Comparison sites defiantly add value to the users by the very nature of what they are doing. They are one of the most useful types of sites around.

The only reason can be that if a user goes to a comparison site, they will find the product /service that they want quickly and easily, rather then searching endlessly in Google, therefore reduce Google's Adwords revenue.

So it is all about dollars and pounds, and nothing about the user experience.

[ian-d]

Lets hope that come 10pm tonight they've resolved the problem and we can all go on our merry way! For now i have used a domant domain i had and copied the data across, that has atleast got me running again!!!

[tonyr]

Well, I'm back up and running with adwords to a new domain.
Most of the keywords have a great quality score with 0.02p minimum bid.

I wonder how long I'll last this time!

[Qui Gon Jinn]

When using adwords, treat your sites as disposable & don't get emotional about them, like seo I guess you never know when you might get hit & are no longer the teachers pet, simply play kiss chase, they hit you by kissing your arse goodbye, you run (copied content over to another domain), they chase, rinse & repeat.

Just because you get spanked once it doesn't necessarily mean your content was bad. make a few modifications & whack up a new one. Maybe "thin" & "narrow"minded, but no reason why you cannot have both running concurrently, why should it be one or the other. Your "fat" site can be your fallback biatch.

[tbp]

Comparison sites defiantly add value to the users by the very nature of what they are doing.

I think Google are losing the plot a bit now, and no longer care about whether sites add value or not.

A lot of good sites have been taken down, and a lot of useless 1 page sites with a small paragraph of text and a couple of links remain. All these do is lengthen the buying process for the searcher, without adding anything usefull.

[tbp]

One side effect of the Google slap I`ve noticed, is that displayed Adwords ad's are now a lot less relevant.

Obviously, specific ad's which are the most relevant are displayed at the top. However, because so many campaigns have disappeared a lot of relevant ad's have gone, leading to a number of very broad match ad's showing up which only have little relevance to the users search.

How does this help the searcher? Before they had a choice of a number of ad's giving details of the exact product they were searching for. Now there is a load of ads with very little relevance.

So as well as Google missing out on lost revenue from all the suspended campaigns, the quality of the displayed adverts has gone down and the users get less choice when it comes to finding the product they want.

And this is supposed to be an improvement? Really don't see what Google is supposed to be gaining by doing this.

[DioBach]

I don't quite understand why Google has an issue with comparison sites.

Competition for froggle / their own shopping search maybe?

[Stellar]

Competition for froggle / their own shopping search maybe?

Yeah, but Froggle is ****e and noone uses it (because its ****e).. so until they sort that out, there is no point in ***** slapping the other comparison sites.

[tonyr]

Good point Qui Gon Jinn and I am beginning to think along those lines.

[tonyr]

Chrisuk, that Geosign site DID deserve to be slapped in my opinion.

[tbp]

Finally got a reply from Google today, and here it is:

LOW QUALITY SCORE

Increased advertising competition or a change in ad text can impact your
keyword's performance and the Quality Score. It is important to monitor
your keywords and, if you notice that they may not be performing as well
as you would like, it may be necessary to refine them or add alternatives.

Quality Score is a dynamic variable that our system assigns to each of
your keywords. It's calculated from a variety of factors and measures how
relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query. The
keyword performance data collected in our periodic account evaluation is
cumulative. Therefore, if your keyword begins with a high Quality Score
and is fairly relevant to your product, its Quality Score is not likely to
drop with everyday traffic fluctuations. User traffic may fluctuate for
various reasons including the time of day, season of the year or current
events. However, if your keyword performs well and continues to do so over
time, this performance information remains a part of the keyword's
evaluation over time and will continue to be included with every
evaluation.However, there are no guarantees. As mentioned above, an
increase in advertising competition or a change in your ad text can impact
your keyword's performance.

We encourage you to review the following important information regarding
our performance monitor and the keyword status column:

- An explanation of how our system evaluates and uses your keyword Quality
Scores:

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...49174&hl=en_GB

- About each keyword status:

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...14081&hl=en_GB

- How to create a targeted keyword list:

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...=6763&hl=en_GB

- Options for activating a keyword that is inactive for search:

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...=6144&hl=en_GB

AFFILIATE SITES

The Quality Score of your keywords has not been impacted by Google's
affiliate policy. Google's affiliate advertising policy states that we
only display one ad per search query for advertisers (affiliates and
parent companies) sharing the same top-level domain in the Display URL.
This policy is designed to provide a better user and advertiser
experience.

We monitor and do not allow the following:

- Ads with redirect Display URLs that automatically send users to the
parent company website. (Affiliates using unique URLs in their Destination
URL field are not affected by this policy as long as the Display URL
matches the domain of the ad's landing page.)

- Ads for intermediary bridge pages whose sole purpose is to link or
redirect traffic to the parent company.

- Ads for framing or mirroring webpages that replicate the look and feel
of a parent site.

You may wish to contact your affiliate parent company directly to ensure
that any changes to your page align with your affiliate agreement.

We appreciate your effort in complying with our guidelines.

On reviewing your campaign, 'xxxxxxx', I found that some of
your ads are violating our policy on Display URL.
In order for your ad(s) to be approved, please edit your Display URL so
that it matches your Destination URL. This policy ensures more consistent
enforcement of our affiliate policies.

After making the appropriate changes, save your ad. This automatically
submits your ad back to us for review

Don't understand the last bit, as my display url and actual url matched exactly, yet apparently this is why my ad's were banned.

[Shane]

hmv - Google Search

second advert.. the epitomy of targeted advertising

term: hmv
product: pay day loan
relevancy: zero
landing page relevancy: zero
quality score: probably freakin great !

now that's a quality user experience ! lol