AFS-Inc (Advanced Formula Search) for PPC/Paid search and SEO/Natural search agency

Google's ever changing & evolving rules

Google claims:
“The actual CPC that each advertiser pays is the minimum amount needed to maintain a rank number higher than the next lower ad”.
Right?. Er… no not actually. Sorry

How come we can beat and pay 0.02p or $0.02 or Euros 0.02 whilst the next highest bidder is paying £4.01 or $5.12 or Euros 4.56?
These are the mysteries and somewhat slight deceptions that Google and other search engines may make.

See section on the ever increasingly important influence of the quality score. This determines why the top advert may be paying far less than the bottom advert.

Google changes in policy:

8th Dec 2005: Landing page content & layout affects quality score.
1st April 2008: Display URL and Destination URL must be the same - existed but never enforced and from that date strictly enforced.
5th May 2008: Trademark protection bidding removed. This represents a major change in policy for the UK & Ireland and no doubt will be extended to the rest of Europe Shorty.
Thousands of undefined & ambiguous terms remain which you sign away your rights to when you agree to Google’s terms. For example abbreviations and what words you may use in adverts.

The importance of Googlers quality score:
has become the single most important factor in maximising performance and profitability of ppc campaigns. The pay per click landscape has become more competitive than ever before and with Yahoos new Panama ad platform moving towards embracing a ‘quality’ based algorithm, understanding the quality score will become more essential than ever for search marketeers and businesses alike. The difficulty in really understanding the Google Quality Score algorithm is the lack of transparency shown by Google, especially with introductions such as the new landing page quality update.

Quality Score:
“Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. To encourage relevant and successful ads within AdWords, our system defines a Quality Score to set your keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and ad rank for the ad auction”.

What factors influence Quality Score?

CTR (click-through-rate) and its history
Ad Copy & Ad text relevance to query
Historical account and keyword performance (mainly but not exclusively CTR) also have volumes conditions.
More recent history (Google places more emphasis on recent history data [CTR, volume etc] than long term data)
Landing Page Quality and content of website
Account structure
Other relevancy factors. There are over 100 factors that can affect quality score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved. Quality Score = (keyword’s CTR, ad text relevance, keyword relevance, landing page relevance & 100 other factors)

The weight of these factors dynamically change according to constantly rules defined by Google.

Multiple Quality Scores:
Although Google speak of a ‘Quality Score’, many advertisers do not understand that Quality Score is actually held at multiple levels which act in different ways.

Ad Rank:
Keyword-targeted ads are ranked on search result pages based on their maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and the keyword’s quality score on Google (For the top positions above Google search results, we use the actual CPC.)