Automatic matching in expanded beta

In webmaster world shorebreak an active member says

“I’ve heard of at least two people who in the last 24-36 hours have received emails from Google stating that Automatic Match will go ‘Production’ as of May 20th, and that the checkbox for it will be pre-checked; that most likely means it will be an opt-out feature, not the opt-in feature that one would have assumed would be the case.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is one of the 3-4 most profound changes to AdWords and the entire paid search industry that have ever occurred, right up there with Quality Score, Broad Match and AdSense.
While those of us who live and breathe SEM will no doubt monitor this closely and make ROI-based decisions as to whether to use Automatic Match or not, IMO the majority of AdWords advertisers will start paying a massive surcharge as of next Tuesday. “

I see immediately Adwords Advisor dismisses his claim saying this post is wrong and Google has nothing like this active now, Following is Adwords Advisor reply

“I almost never post on the weekends, however – with today being the exception that proves the rule. I felt I had to jump in briefly to say that the headline of this thread and text of the post quoted above are simply not correct. Rumors that take on a life of their own trouble me, actually, and I don’t want to see that happen here.
What is happening: Automatic Matching has been in beta for some time as regular readers of this forum will know – and starting on May 20th the beta will be expanded somewhat. Even with the expansion of the beta, the number of advertisers who will see this beta option in their account is truly tiny.
Again, to be very clear Automatic Matching goes not go live 5/20.
I’ll gather some more details when I get back to work on Monday, and post again.
AWA “

Adwords bidding what is real with Adwords

In webmasterworld a member asks

“I figure only someone from Google like AdWordsAdvisor can answer this, but I’m curious.
I appreciate that ordinarily bidding is converted to $USD and it’s pretty much real-time and at regular interchange rates, and there is no advantage from using one currency or another.
My question concerns the maximum bid of $US100. In other currencies, the maximum bid is roughly equivalent to $US100, but is rounded. So instead of it being £51.445622 today, it is probably something like £50.00.
This figure seems to only get updated every month or so.
So, if the maximum £GBP bid of £50 equals $97.19, does someone bidding the maximum allowable in $USD ($US100) have an advantage over someone in bidding the maximum allowable in £GBP (£50.00/$97.19)? “

and Adwords Advisor replies

“I think I have spent somewhere in the neigborhood of 16,500 hours (I just did the math) working with AdWords and AdWords advertisers, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard this question. 🙂
I’m not saying that it’s not a good question. Just that it’s one that I have never thought about – nor have I had occasion to research it. And yes, this is a longish way of saying that I don’t know the answer. 😉
And, in a sense it’s a bit academic since one’s postion does not depend on Max bid alone – and all the factors are constantly in motion, rather than at a standstill. It’s worth remembering that the advertiser ‘A’ who is in position ‘X’ might actually be paying less than the advertiser ‘B’ below them – if advertiser ‘A’s quality is better.
I have had much less time to post on this forum recently, and have not made it a point to get an answer to this question due to that (bordering on severe) lack of time. That said, I will try to run down an answer – but, to set reasonable expectations, I can not speak to how soon that will happen. ;)”

Though the question is not too important its something different and worth while to hear

A good writeup on adwords quality score

Jeremy of PPC discussions has a very good write up on Frequently asked questions about Google adwords quality score.
Check out his postings here

Some of the questions answered:

Question 1 – How can I improve my quality score?
Question 2 – How many quality scores are there?
Question 3 – Will changing to a different keyword match type, for example from broad match to exact match, give me a better quality score?
Question 4 – I have been told (and read lots of places) that when I first start a new AdWords campaign I should bid really high so my ad is higher on the page. That will give me a higher click through rate and that means I will have a better quality score. Is that good advice?
Question 5 – Having Flash on your landing page is bad for your quality score right?
Question 6 – I get a lot of clicks from the Google Search Network. Does that help improve my quality score?
Question 7 – Does using dynamic keyword insertion help my quality score?
Question 8 – Does turning off the content network help improve my quality score? My CTR is always a lot lower on the content network so I assume turning it off will help my quality score improve.
Question 9 – How can I find out what my quality score is?
Question 10 – I am the only person bidding on a certain keyword but my minimum bid is higher than I think it should be. If I’m the only one bidding how come my minimum bid isn’t $0.01? My quality score is “OK”.
Question 11 – I just a made a lot of changes to my AdWords campaigns and to my landing pages to try and improve my quality score. How soon should I expect to see quality score changes in my account?
Question 12 – I just added a bunch of new keywords to my account and almost 1/2 of them received a poor quality score and minimum bid of $5.00 right away before I ever received a single impression. How the hell can Google say I have a poor quality score before my ad even gets a chance to run?
Question 13 – It seems like no matter what I do or try my quality score is always poor. Are there certain types of sites that just don’t work well with AdWords?
Question 14 – Is there a site or something I can sign up to find out in advance about quality score updates before they happen?

Head over to his blog to read detailed answers to about questions

How to track keywords triggering broadmatch

I have seen many people ask this question how to track keywords triggering broad match. Well there is no definite solution for this. Google doesn’t provide a way to see which keywords trigger broad match. But one thing is for sure broad match is mostly triggered if you set a high enough bid and don’t have any restrictions on the keyword. Restrictions like geo-targeting, low max bid will stop the keyword from being triggered by a broad match.
Also if the broad match option is disabled it will not show broad match. As Fast as i know there is no definite solution for find broad match keywords.

Adwords campaign can show active and still cannot show ads

This is news for me. I haven’t seen this happening in campaigns i manage. When i was going through Adwords discussion group in Google groups i can see adwords pro reply for a users problem. he says

“Please know that when a campaign or ad group is marked as ‘active’ it means only that it is *not paused or deleted*. It is not meant as an indication that the campaign is currently delivering ads. In other words, a campaign or ad group can be ‘active’ (i.e. not paused or deleted) but still not actually running, for a variety of reasons. “\\

So an adgroup can be active but still cannot ads so if you face similar problem check for other issues other than the status of Ad group.

Landing page load time now part of Quality Score in Google Adwords

After a long wait Google has enhanced their quality scoring algorithm to take Landing page load time into consideration.

Landing page load time now plays an important role. Starting mid of June Load time of html of a page will be important for better Quality Score. Good quality score is important for any campaign. If you have a limited budget its important to take Quality score seriously since it reduces the cost of advertising significantly. Ads will show up higher if the Quality score is higher for a particular advertiser even if the bid for that keyword is less than that of his competitors.

“How is landing page load time evaluated?

Landing page load time is determined by:

I. The domain of your ad group’s landing pages

A keyword’s load time grade is based on the average load time of the landing pages in the ad group and of any landing pages in the rest of the account with the same domain. If multiple ad groups have landing pages with the same domain, therefore, the keywords in all these ad groups will have identical load time grades.

Two things to note:

When determining load time grade, the AdWords system follows destination URLs at both the ad and keyword level and evaluates the final landing page.
If your ad group contains landing pages with different domains, the keywords’ load time grades will be based on the domain with the slowest load time. All the keywords in an ad group will always have the same load time grade.
Let’s look at an example:

Say your account has four ad groups, and each ad group uses a different landing page: example.com/apple, example.com/orange, example.com/pear, and your-company-site.com. The first three share the same domain: example.com. Keywords in the first three ad groups will all have the same landing page load time grade, which will be based on the average load time of example.com/apple, example.com/orange, and example.com/pear.

II. Your server’s geographic region

We evaluate your load time relative to the average in your server’s geographic region. If your website is hosted on a server in India, for example, your landing page load time will be compared to the average load time in that region of India. This is true even if your website is intended for an audience in the United States.

III. Your page’s HTML

Currently, landing page load time measures the time it takes to download the HTML content of your landing page. However, in the future, the load time of images, flash, video, JavaScript, and other components will be considered as well. We therefore recommend that you optimize all components of your page for the quickest possible load time.

IV. Multiple readings

To ensure accuracy, we take several load time measurements, drop the worst, and average those remaining. If your landing page is down for one of these readings, therefore, it won’t affect your load time grade.

“

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=93113

I recommend make sure the page is perfect HTML without much errors that way it gives an opportunity to get better Quality score

Blog hacking with Hidden links injection

Lately lot of vulnerable blogs are compromised and hidden links are added to the blog. Some of the hidden links are pointing to porn sites or some of them are so vulnerable that when the page loads those links will call some malicious scumware or malware.

Especially word press older versions had these problems . Latest word press versions are well patched and dont have these vulnerabilities. Google’s automated detection has a built in notification system where if a vulnerability for a site is detected the site owner is notified to the email listed on their site. Also in certain cases Google will remove the pages from search engine index for 30 days and the site owner needs to clean the website and submit for reinclusion.

So i recommend keep checking your blogs often and don’t leave it unattended it will look to your site being totally removed from search engine results.

Zombie websites – Expired domains replaced with old content

Hobbs of webmaster world complains here that Google is allowing Adsense ads to be published on Zombie sites. Zombie sites according to him are sites that are mostly expired domains which are replaced with its original content to make it look as if its the same site. Most of these sites completely loose their Google rankings since google has whois data which is updated internally and any major change to a whois of a particular site especially if the site changes hands google automatically imposes a penalty and makes sure all backlinks to that domain are banned and the site has to start gaining new backlinks.
So Google does its work but the sites that are expired still might get traffic from Backlinks they had previously the question of the main poster in this thread is why does Google allow sites that are like these to publish adsense ads. That is a Good question which only Google can respond.

My take on this Google don’t have time to check each and every site whether it violates copyright or its using previous owners contents. if some one complains they can definitely look into it and if the person who complains have valid reason then definitely Google will take action against the site.
I personally feel automated means to detect these stuff is just a waste of resources which can be spent in a much better way. Final take Google can keep providing adsense ads as long as the ads are relevant to the site if a valid complain comes they can block ads from being published on this site.

Which sites you filter in Adsense – Webmasterworld discussion

After Google released AdSense it is become one of the primary source of income for site owners who monetize their website through good content. Apart from the good results from AdSense there are a lot of spam related issues with AdSense. Lots of MFA ( Made For AdSense ) sites started coming up and this has polluted both search results and user experience. Most of the people behind MFA sites are big time spammers and they are ready to do anything to get traffic to the site.

Good traffic will result in more click through from AdSense and this will result in more revenue for the website publisher. AdSense itself is a very useful way of monetizing a site i always like to stay away since its too much abused by spammers. I feel today most of the people who see AdSense ads all over the page will feel that the site is related to spam. Its all because of the major abuse AdSense has gone through. AdSense itself offers the option to run ads for MLM schemes, ring tone affiliates, spam parked domains, get rich quick scheme, email harvesters, crap toolbars, crap software without a decent option to uninstall , scam sites asking funds for charity etc.

For publishers Google has an option to block certain type of sites from being shown up on their sites. Publishers have the option to filter out unwanted sites. This is great since some users don’t like sites showing certain type of Ads. For example a family friendly site don’t want to see ads related to drugs stuff we have an option to filter this. A cool discussion in webmaster world discusses on what type of sites are being filtered from their sites.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3636512.htm

Most common filtered sites as per discussion are MLM, drug related sites, ring tone sites, sites offering free stuff, Parked domains, Work-At-Home, E-mail harvesters etc.

Google Adwords Quality Score Revealed

Barry of Searchengineland reports that he found a Google result which displays Google Quality Score for adwords. Googlel has long said Quality score will play an important when it comes to higher and better Adwords sponsored link positioning. Now it seems they reveled the Quality score probably to while doing some testing on Some Ads.

The 3 scoring displayed ‘Pscore,’ ‘mCPC,’ and ‘thresh . According to Barry Pscore might be the Pagerank score of the document, mCPC might be the minimum cost per click the user has set in his Campaign and thresh is the threshold level on where the ad will be displayed.

Check the link for more information,