“The less you know about a subject, the less you believe there is to know in total.” - source
The paid search industry on the outset appear content and convinced that CTR is the answer to quality score problems; therefore, it is a simple piece of the web marketing experience that warrants little to no attention, optimization or speculation. It is cut and dry…
Or is it?
The most obvious no-brainer to optimizing quality score is writing better performing ads. <- Common theme in almost any blog post on the topic. Another common statistic that corroborates this theme: Hal Varian has suggested (see the pie chart in this video) that roughly 60% of the Quality Score formula is your click through rate (CTR). This is not a bad theme at all. It does help. Tricked you, didn’t I? You thought I was going to ‘dog’ writing better ads didn’t you? 
PPC
PPC, quality scores
Google Adwords will be removing position preference. The feature has already been disabled. But for those that would be grandfathered in, they are removing this option entirely come May 2011. This announcement came via a message within the Adwords.
Announcement:
Retiring the position preference setting
In early May, we’ll be removing the option to set position preferences.
Learn more about what this means for your campaigns.
Position preference gave advertisers the ability to tell Google where they wanted their ad to appear in Google’s search ads on a given page.
We call it a preference because we can’t guarantee you’ll always get the position (or rank) you ask for. Here is an example of how you could set your position preference:
- Higher than a given position (such as above 7)
- Lower than a given position (such as below 4)
- Within a range of positions (such as from 2-8)
Google, Industry News, PPC, Sales and Marketing
Google, pest control guy, PPC
The term “optimization” gets tossed around quite a bit. What does it really mean? Does it just mean that you’re trying your hardest? Does it mean finding ways to make marginal improvements? Or does it mean truly achieving the best possible results by using all of the data and technology available? Last week I attended a webinar put on by Rachel Charlton and Peter Thelen from Webtrends Ad Director team that helped teach the difference between bid management and true optimization.
More and More Complexity
It’s no secret that managing an enterprise-level PPC campaign is complicated. You could be managing hundreds or even thousands of keywords and keyword combinations, a couple different versions of ad copy for each, different landing pages, etc. Put them all together and you could have literally hundreds of thousands of possible combinations and you are expected to figure out ideal combinations to produce the best results and the strongest ROAS. Plus you’re responsible for creating ad copy, optimizing landing pages, and still trying to get home before dark.
PPC
PPC, ppc bid management, real optimization, webtrends
