Google landing page debate & click fraud report
There has been a lot of heat recently on the implications of Google Adwords’ algorithm changes related to the quality of landing pages. Many advertisers have been affected with their click costs going up as a result, with reports of many choosing to suspend their advertising. Jennifer Slegg has a detailed report on Search Engine Watch covering both sides of the story. There are several threads on Webmasterworld as well on this topic, while Steve Bryant on eWeek.com asks the moot question: who decides the quality of user experience?
What upsets advertisers is not that stringent criteria have been applied to evaluate landing pages– I doubt if anyone will seriously have any grouse against that– but the fact that they do not know exactly what constitutes a “good landing page”.
It is in everybody’s interests (including Google’s) that Google clarifies this as clearly as it can without divulging its trade and techonology secrets. Reason is, besides a fraction of advertisers choosing to stop the advertising, there is a real threat of Google inadvertently perpetrating click fraud.
Let me explain. An advertiser who feels that his ads have been penalized for low quality score is more than likely to be clicking through to competitors’ ads to figure out why they are ranked high. Now imagine every advertiser clicking through a few ads like this everyday, and you can well imagine the extent of wasted clicks and dollars. This is hypothetical — but certainly possible. Now, one can argue that advertisers are likely to be checking out competitors anyway. Yes, of course. However, the potential for such clicks increasing is significantly higher in a scenario where an advertiser feels that he needs to know a lot more about a competitor’s website than just finding out more about the competitor. There’s a difference.
While on click fraud, Google has reported that an independent third-party inquiry into its click fraud prevention methods has found its people and processes in this area to be reasonable. Now, this is certainly something positive for advertisers, though it will take quite something for Google and Yahoo (or any search engine offering PPC advertising) to eliminate this problem completely.
