Affiliate Arbitrators watch out! Google Adwords is surveying your ads

**Otherjohn** · 09-28-2006, 10:32 AM

Ok I am not sure if this is new or not, but I posted it on my blog. I will probably feel like a fool if its not realy a new discovery.
http://www.affiliatepro.info/affilia...s-link-useful/

Quote:

Today I discovered something. My dryer won’t start. Ok so that’s not the discovery. The discovery is what I found while doing a search in google for dryer information. I was searching for my dryer using the basic key phrase “amana dryer” in my favorite browser, Firefox. And on the adwords column I saw listed an ad for “amanda appliances parts”. So I clicked it. Then I was taken to a Landing Page that was just an image and small text telling me to call a 1-800 number for parts information. It wasn’t what I was looking for so I clicked my back button. An low and behold - my discovery!

What’s this? Is google asking if this ad helped me? It would seem so. So you may ask, what does this mean for you Affiliates out there? Well, one note about this ads landing page is that it has no content and its quality is very poor. This poor advertiser probably paid too much for this click and now that I voted that it wasn’t useful, his quality score will probably go down even more. It’s important as an affiliate to make sure your pages hold value and content to the type of ads you are showing. You can’t make money if your quality score is low and you won’t have conversions if your “link wasn’t helpful!” Content on your landing pages and the context that its given in relationship to the ad, plays a vital role with whether or not someone will convert. This was a perfect example of a BAD landing page.

NOTE: Here are the specs of things that may contributed to me finding this. I was in Firefox 1.5, Searching google. The key phrase was NOT a long tail phrase. The adwords sponsors site was very low quality and not SEO friendly [page was built using ImageReady!]. I quickly realized that this was not what I was looking for and hit the back button. I am not sure the quality of the ad triggered the adwords question, because it did do it with another ad that was much higher quality. That leads me to believe it was the speed in which I hit the back button, OR just the fact that I hit the back button!

**Otherjohn** · 09-28-2006, 10:50 AM

ok, so its nothing new - just new to me...doooh

**xboxundone** · 09-28-2006, 05:50 PM

It is somewhat new but not brand new. IF your content on your site is truely related to the search you have no worries but those that aren't you may have some worrying in the near future.

**Otherjohn** · 09-28-2006, 05:55 PM

Yeh, I did a more detailed search on this and found some others posted it as early as july! I felt pretty dumb. But it was a neat find, even if its late.

**GeorgeB** · 09-28-2006, 09:12 PM

either way thanks, it's news to me.

hey xboxundone and otherjohn.

If I show you a landing page or 2 of mine would you give me an honest critique with maybe a tip or 2?

I'm trying to go orange by next month and well... it WAS looking good...

**Otherjohn** · 09-28-2006, 09:26 PM

Sure, I recommend you PM it.
I would be more than happy to help

**GeorgeB** · 09-28-2006, 09:34 PM

PM is in your box.

Thanks.

**foreman** · 09-29-2006, 03:12 AM

It's interesting to see how these "improvements" are affecting Google in the long run. With Google Slap they already forced some small businesses to change PPC services. Not everybody has a product or service that converts or produces profit so well, it can justify minimum $1 clicks. In my opinion, Google's intentions are good, but these recent changes are really big hits for small businesses. Many of my friends who are promoting their newsletters in various niches have already moved to less popular PPC services. They used to use only Adwords, now they are using Yahoo, MSN, Miva etc. all simultaneously.

Honesty I think it's stupid that when you find a keyword that has lot's of traffic, but no advertisers you have to pay minimum $1-5 to activate the keyword unless your site is optimized for that keyword only. For example, let's say keyword "macaroni" has 0 advertisers, but lot's of traffic. Your site is about pasta generally. Macaroni is related to pasta, but no, you have to pay $1 per click just to activate the keyword since your site is about pasta, not macaroni. What happened to minimum $0.01 clicks? In my opinion, if there's no advertisers, bidding should start from $0.01, always.

*edit* And I just realized I didn't say anything about the topic of the thread. Well, these surveys are a good thing. I hope Google is using the feedback to lower the price for advertisers that provide useful results and not only disabling keywords for advertisers who are providing not so useful info.

**xboxundone** · 09-29-2006, 11:33 AM

Yes feel free to pm me with your url and i will review it and give feedback.

**GeorgeB** · 09-29-2006, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by foreman

It's interesting to see how these "improvements" are affecting Google in the long run. With Google Slap they already forced some small businesses to change PPC services. Not everybody has a product or service that converts or produces profit so well, it can justify minimum $1 clicks. In my opinion, Google's intentions are good, but these recent changes are really big hits for small businesses. Many of my friends who are promoting their newsletters in various niches have already moved to less popular PPC services. They used to use only Adwords, now they are using Yahoo, MSN, Miva etc. all simultaneously.

Honesty I think it's stupid that when you find a keyword that has lot's of traffic, but no advertisers you have to pay minimum $1-5 to activate the keyword unless your site is optimized for that keyword only. For example, let's say keyword "macaroni" has 0 advertisers, but lot's of traffic. Your site is about pasta generally. Macaroni is related to pasta, but no, you have to pay $1 per click just to activate the keyword since your site is about pasta, not macaroni. What happened to minimum $0.01 clicks? In my opinion, if there's no advertisers, bidding should start from $0.01, always.

*edit* And I just realized I didn't say anything about the topic of the thread. Well, these surveys are a good thing. I hope Google is using the feedback to lower the price for advertisers that provide useful results and not only disabling keywords for advertisers who are providing not so useful info.

Now cmon you know it's all about keeping those shareholders happy.

And of course those surveys are going to be used to target low quality sites for cpc increases. Why else would they go through the trouble. Google stopped careing about quality and relevance just for teh sake of caring about it a long time ago. Now they only care about quality and relevance when it might increase their bottom line.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely.."

**foreman** · 09-29-2006, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Now cmon you know it's all about keeping those shareholders happy.

Yup. Google's "Do no evil" starts to sound more cornier everyday

**MonkeyBiz** · 09-29-2006, 09:39 PM

Google blows anyway