Call for Transparency?
Filed Under (the PPC Book) by Jeff Hudson on 30-10-2007
A great post 2 weeks ago at SEL (yes I’m just getting to it) in which Alan Rim Kaufmann calls for transparency from Google Adwords. Alan’s position:
In the long term, however, I hope Google reconsiders QS. It is time the search industry grows beyond the “just trust us” black-box approach for ad relevance. I humbly suggest that Google users, Google advertisers, and Google stockholders would be better served by some yet-to-be-discovered transparent and open model for ranking ads and charging for clicks.
I’m in semi-agreement here. To me, the quality score is a necessary element and should be further developed. Without the quality score you will quickly move towards a tiered advertising landscape in which power aggregators muscle into every single market niche and become brokers, which increases cost and barrier to entry for the smaller players. That would eventually kill what I consider the beauty of our industry. Low barrier to entry, high innovation level, flat playing field.
The quality score, as a black box element, wards off that scenario. If you keep the quality score, but make it transparent, I think you are playing with fire. Somewhere in between those two is where I think the sweet spot is. Of course, I’m speaking only as a paid search analyst and small business person. An economist would probably have my lunch here. But then again, and economist doesn’t know Google Adwords like I do.
So there you have it. Food for thought.
What do you think?
Option A: Total transparency - pure open market paid search (think overture 2000)
Option B: Black box ad ranking - what you have today
Option C: Transparency + Ad ranking - closer to option A
Option D: Complain about everything, offer no solutions
Option E: F this, I’m going back to SEO
Jeff,
You touched on the point that hits home for me - if the system is 100% transparent the only real variable at that point is the size of your budget. It’s pretty obvious who wins in that situation.
I’ve helped “little guys” kick the crap out of the “big guys” by applying techniques revolving around the QS to their campaigns that for whatever reason the big guys didn’t, or at least didn’t do well. If there’s a help page at Google that lays everything out on the table in terms of getting a perfect quality score the little guy may as well throw in the towel in terms of AdWords marketing - he won’t be able to compete.
And for the record I don’t “just trust them”. I test, test, test some more and then apply winning formulas to accounts in order to maximize and QS related benefits. When I see something that’s not right I contact a Google rep and get it worked out. Those instances are few and far between these days - anyone that’s been professionally managing AdWords accounts for at least a few years should have a pretty good idea at this point what gets you a high QS and what sends your QS spiraling into the depths of excessive minimum bids. If someone calling themselves a professional doesn’t have a good grasp on that concept they should rethink the “professional” label.
Option B with small incremental steps towards semi-transparency (like the recent LP vs KW additiona to the diagnostic tool) would be my vote.
If adwords is truly about optimizing conversions, shouldn’t quality score be algo-based prediction of conversion rates? instead of this user-experience rubbish?
However, here’s the rub: users will develop ad blindness if they are bombarded with ad after ad. Hence, the quality score is used to preserve value in the right hand vertical area, so that users are occassionally rewarded with informative websites.
Jeremy —- thanks for the feedback. Most of the PPC folks I speak with regularly agree - some form or another of Option B. I will compile all our votes and send them to my Google rep
Regarding the management of quality score - I am almost beyond the quality score as a function of managing accounts. I paid a lot of attention to it when it was released because it was interesting and an important development. Now that I’ve adjusted, and the people who work for me have adjusted, I think it’s sort of intuitive how to build accounts that garner solid quality scores. Rarely do we have problems with low quality scores at the keyword level, and if we do, it’s usually a result of an isolated incident that is relatively easy to adjust. Oftentimes it’s a case of, ‘oh, this keyword doesn’t really belong here’, let’s move it to another adgroup or delete it altogether.
Chui —- Adwords isn’t about optimizing conversions. That’s the advertisers job.
Chui,
Conversion rates are pretty easy to “fake” and in my opinion, if it’s a variable that’s considered in relation to QS and therefore price, it should only be a tiny, tiny piece of the equation.
“I think it’s sort of intuitive how to build accounts that garner solid quality scores.”
Exactly, we’re on the same page. You and your team have been professionally managing accounts for awhile and it’s basically second nature - building out accounts that get high quality scores that is. Outside of new accounts that I just start working with, I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw one of those $5 or $10 minimum bids you read about people who are new to AdWords get hit with with they dump 200 unrelated keywords into a single ad group pointing to a single destination page.