If you are a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertiser, don’t be surprised if you experience unusual fluctuations in your current Yahoo, Google and MSN campaigns. Recently, Google has updated its Quality Score methodology, which raises the bar on the need for keyword consistency between landing pages, ad copy, and keywords in Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaigns. We have experienced some delays in getting client ads served right away when ad campaigns go live, because it takes Google a little time to serve ads and then assign quality scores. Since Yahoo and MSN have both tried to mirror Google as closely as possible in the way they rank and serve ads, the same type of Quality Score requirements exist in both of those PPC engines as well. The old days are over - remember, when you could simply bid for position in Yahoo (or the old Overture…or if you’re really “old” in this industry, the old Goto.com)?
In simple terms, quality scores exist on a keyword level in Google and ad group level in Yahoo and MSN. The most interesting of the updates to these quality score indexes in Google is that they now consider the landing pages of your ads more seriously. So if your landing pages do not contain the same keywords being used in your campaigns and ads, then Google may not consider the pages relevant, and as a result, assign a poor quality score.
So what should you do? Start approaching PPC more like SEO, in terms of ensuring alignment and consistency in the copy used across all ad and website touch points. In fact, this has started to become just as tricky as SEO, in terms of balancing true ad quality versus other calculated factors that may or may not best represent your products. It reminds me of the SEO debates about balancing content-rich sites versus graphically appealing sites. Also, the same issues arise about overdoing things, and making too many changes, without giving prior changes a chance to make an impact. Patience, on the part of both clients and agencies, is required, although as we all know, in the fast-paced business world, pressure for results often clashes with this requirement.
Let us know what your experiences have been with the evolving quality score aspect of PPC.