Today Google announced: Quality Score Improvements .
The Key Points, according to Google:
- Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
- Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
- First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account
Source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/08/quality-score-improvements.html
The minimum bid will be replaced with “first page bid.". By using this instead of minimum bid, this gives "better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals." “First Page Bids” estimates are decided at the keyword level and are derived from each keyword’s Quality Score.
These new quality score changes do “somewhat” solve a consistent problem I have. Many keywords were often marked “inactive” based on Google’s assumptions. This eliminates the “inactive” keywords, thus eliminating a headache of mine.
Of course with this approach that means that all “inactive for search” keywords will be active. Assuming these keywords have a low quality score, it could affect the performance of the entire campaign. Before these new quality score rules are marked active in your account, it’s recommended to “fix” or remove all “inactive for search” keywords.
This new quality score approach also presents a new set of issues. There is a now a geographic factor involved in search eligibility. Specific keywords may have more value in one region over another. To have a truly optimized campaign, may involve creating multiple geo-targeted Campaigns and AdGroups per DMA, which could be an administrative nightmare.
These new changes will be rolled out to a very small segment of customers over the next few days. I will post more as I learn more
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