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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.

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Consumers are smart. People know when they are being marketed to. Ad agencies bombard consumers with ads everyday. Gas stations have ads above the pumps for credit cards. The aisles of the grocery store have coupon machines that plat sound clips and automatically dispense coupons as a shopper pushes their cart past. Magazines are filled with more ads than actual articles. The Internet is powered by ads. There are hardly any websites without ads all over. Even eCommerce giants such as Amazon.com have ads on nearly every page. If you searching for a topic on Google or Associated Content you are served ads somewhat related to your query. Consumers can’t escape advertisements.But when does a consumer welcome an advertisement? While the ad at the gas pump might be relative, or the coupon at the grocery store for an item similar to an item the shopper needs, it is still at times not relevant to the consumer at all. In the next year, this will change for online consumers. As more and more people use social networking sites such as FaceBook and other sites where an Internet user feels comfortable putting in information, an advertiser will be able to target each ad to more than one attribute. As Google offers more and more solutions to a user, and collects more data on them, the ability to target a number of different consumer attributes becomes simple.For example, FaceBook users input a number of things that they would never tell a marketing company. Look at a FaceBook profile. Users input age, sex, relationship status, career status, location, interests, school information, etc. All of these attributes allow marketers to serve ads that are relevant. If a company wants to target women age 20-24, who have a degree from Duke, are engaged and current live in Nebraska, they can. In the next year, Google will be able to do the same and use this to make each sponsored search ad they serve even more relevant. As they collect data from what you purchase via Google Checkout, what your search history is, what you have clicked on, what you talk about using Google Talk, the ads they serve to you will be more relative to what you are truly more likely to purchase. No longer will the searcher be shown any ad that is running for the search term “Nike Sneakers”, Google will know your online shopping habits, your location, and more. These attributes will allow a marketer to truly pinpoint their ads to a consumer that is interested in their products. We are seeing limited demographic targeting on a smaller scale right now through Google, but as advertising experts who run highly targeted campaigns on FaceBook know, they more highly targeted the focus, the better return on investment.Consumers are smart, but marketers are getting smarter.

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There are a number of companies who use Twitter effectively. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.com is an avid user and has been able to increase the traffic to his human-powered search engine. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, also posts updates about what he is doing as well as his company. He recently posted a tweet about his trip to the MicroSoft Offices. Kevin Rose of Digg obviously understands the power of social networking on the web and often posts updates using Twitter.SouthWest Airlines and Jet Blue post sales on airfare and will even interact with people who are following their updates via Twitter. The same goes for WholeFoods, Zappos and others. With more and more people sending email marketing directly to the SPAM box, Twitter is enabling corporations, companies and even individuals to engage their audience. The companies that take the time to engage with followers are sure to find their audience increase and there businesses grow.Add the Following via TwitterJason Calacanis http://twitter.com/JasonCalacanis (Mahalo.com)Kevin Rose http://twitter.com/KevinRose (Digg.com)Jet Blue http://twitter.com/JetBlue (JetBlue.com)WholeFoods http://twitter.com/wholefoods (WholeFoods.com)Zappos http://twitter.com/zappos (www.Zappos.com)SouthWest Airlines http://twitter.com/SouthwestAir (SouthWest.com)and meDan London http://www.twitter.com/danlondon

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At one point Google was running a BETA that allowed Cross-Channel conversion tracking in account. I was selected for the BETA, but never took advantage of it. When I did want to do it for a client, it was too late, they wouldn’t enable it in the account I needed. Just saw this in my original account today:As of August 25, 2008, the cross-channel conversion tracking feature and all related data will be removed from all accounts. If you'd like to keep a copy of your data, please make a record of it before its removal. AdWords conversion tracking will not be affected.Interesting that they killed this tracking. Any readers using it?

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Straight from Google:HERE

This post is from from my other blog here

Barrons.com posted the following data:Google’s (GOOG) share of the U.S. search market increased to 68.29% in May from 67.9% in April and 65.13% a year ago, according to market research firm Hitwise. By contrast, Yahoo’s (YHOO) share fell to 19.95% from 20.28% a month ago and 20.89% a year ago.Market share for Microsoft’s (MSFT) MSN fell to 5.89%, from 6.26% in April and 7.61% a year ago.IAC/Interactive’s (IACI) Ask.com increased its share in May to 4.23% from 4.17% in April and 3.92% a year ago.A pretty big jump, since each % = thousands of users. My paid search spend almost follows that same breakdown, probably even more so toward Google. With the rumored deal between Yahoo! and Google happening the search landscape will change. Imagine Yahoo! no longer using their own NATURAL results....You rank #1 in Yahoo! for a term and it drives a ton of traffic and sales. You rank #16 in Google and get minimal traffic. If the deal involves Yahoo! using only Google's natural search results....that is a huge loss.Should be interesting to see how this plays out...

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