The Manning Update
Filed Under (AdWords, AdWords Quality Score, the PPC Book) by Jeff Hudson on 23-02-2007
The Adwords Quality Score update is propogating over the next couple days, as per the Adwords blog
we began rolling out improvements to the Quality Score algorithm, which will update the Quality Score for keywords in your account over the next 3 to 4 days….
As a result, you may see the minimum bid for your keywords increase or decrease based on the updated algorithm
The reason I’m calling this one the Manning update is because it’s the absolute opposite of the bumbling Grossman leak late last week. Why Manning, because he’s smart and learns from his mistakes. Because Peyton Manning takes what the defense gives him, and will kill you all day long if you don’t adjust. He doesn’t force his agenda, and doesn’t need to throw the ‘Brett Favre’ every play. He knows if he wants to win, he just needs to poke and prod at your weakness, until you make an adjustment.
If we go back to the superbowl, we saw that Peyton Manning did his homework. He knew that the weakness of the Bears Cover 2 defense is the pass to the flat underneath the corners/safety’s. Peyton’s not special for knowing that, the whole world knows that. Buy he took what the Bears gave him, and they never made an adjustment otherwise. What’s the Adwords equivalent to a pass underneath? A very small adjustment, a penny here and a penny there.
From WMW:
It seems like the changes are live and kicking, i see some pressure on about 5% of my keywords so far. Strange this time “blue cool widget”
“was great” “now great”
Min bid was .04 now .05
Like Manning, Google learned from past mistakes with the previous quality score updates. You can’t blow up the entire industry to make more profit, or you lose your base. This was a small, predictable adjustment, so far at least. As Google looks at it now, they’d rather make 10 small updates a year, increasing the rake a few pennies each time, than make 1 update a year to jump $5.00. It’s small, but Google will take it. And at the end of the day, they’ll go home with the trophy.
