danlondon

On Thursday, August 21st, Google Adwords released a statement concerning their current Quality Score changes. Since Quality Score has such an enormous impact on Paid Search, the news was certainly significant.

The blog post stated that there would be three major changes to the Quality Score: no more “inactive for search” keywords, an on-the-fly calculation of an individual keyword’s Quality Score and the “minimum bid” would be replaced by a “first page bid” instead.

These seemingly small changes could have a huge impact on the Paid Search accounts for small and large businesses alike. From the financial aspect, recommending “first page bid” amounts would push bid prices higher and higher – making the possibility of a Bidding War far more likely. Of course, Google Adwords ultimately benefits as more and more marketers push their prices higher on their most important keywords. In the long run, however, it’s the businesses would lose out here as the profit margins sharply decrease with every penny increase on click prices.

Secondly, the on-the-fly calculation of the Quality Score seems too far-fetched to be executed flawlessly. Currently, many marketers believe that the Quality Score of a single keyword is also affected by the performance of the other keywords in its Ad Group. Will this still be relevant with an “immediate” Quality Score calculation? Can the delivery systems calculate the Quality Score based on other competitors’ keywords as well as the overall performance of the keyword itself – AND the keywords within the Ad Group?

Regardless, it’s safe to say that there will be plenty of eyes watching their Paid Search accounts and prices over the next few weeks until the revisions to the Quality Score have settled down again.