In observing the Search Marketing Industry for about 9 years, I have often heard the phrase "It is a cat & mouse game." Google (or any search engine) is the "cat", and there are many different kinds of "mice" that seem to stay "one step ahead" in the game. Sometimes the mouse "throws a brick" (click on illustration to animate), and temporarily wins one of the "battles" (vs. winning the "war").
This Brokerblogger post is on misleading "middlemen" websites that take the end-user, searcher to a landing page of AdSense (PPC) links. This increases the number of clicks that a searcher has to do in order to find the exact relevant content that he intends to find (a poorer user experience for me, and maybe many). Google has their "Google AdWords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines" which says "In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad." It also says "You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site)."
However, this "PPC abuse" Google Video done by some anonymous person who posted on this SEW Forum topic entitled "AdWord Abuse & Search Arbitrage", graphically shows the problem. I like his point about "another key point: don't forget that these sites are created programatically. where there is one now, there will be 10 next week, and 100 in a few months. this will continue until EVERY niche is diluted with these sorts of advertisers." The "1st example" it uses is about a Sponsored Link on the right of the SERP that says "Forklift", and then "Helpful Links for forklift". I now notice that that PPC ad is no longer showing on my screen at a Google search for "forklift". But, this "Forklifts", New & Used Forklifts, Low Cost - View Online!, www.Faster-Results.com" is!
To me, this is almost the same situation as the other one, because that PPC AdWords ad takes you to a landing page of 10 "(sponsored)" links (probably AdSense ads). That sure doesn't bring me "faster results". Keep in mind the Google AdSense Program Policies say "No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant." That site does, however, ask you "Are you looking for?" and gives the searcher a choice of 8 more keywords phrases that in turn take you to more sponsored link landing pages. So, it does "Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your (their) site content." What is Google doing about this?
Back on 12/8/05 Google posted "A new addition to the Quality Score" on their "Inside Adwords" section. But, this "Quality Score" factor that was supposed to take into account "..the quality of your ad's landing page, and other relevancy factors." evidently wasn't enough. I think Google realized that in the "Mousehunt", the mouse was still on its shoulder. So, now Google and Nicholas Fox, senior business product manager for AdWords, have set some "mousetraps" for the "offending 'middlemen' websites".
On 5/26/06, I read a great Threadwatch discussion on "Google Crawling AdWords Landing Pages for Quality". It had a link to Danny Sullivan's "Google AdsBot Now Coming To Assess Your Landing Pages, Will Impact Your AdRank". In the subscriber "longer version" of Danny's post, he quotes Nicholas Fox as saying "I am very concerned about the user experience. They do the search, saw both unpaid listings and ads, then click and get to another page of ads. That's not a good user experience. It's a pretty bad experience. My guess is that as a result of seeing these ads, users are going to become blind to them." (DISCLAIMER - Danny Sullivan once told me I could use a "few" sentences from his paid subscription content for my blog, so I will remove the above 5 sentence quote if necessary.)
Why did Google not utilize the old proverb of "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Some think that Google was making more money leaving all these misleading "middlemen" websites. So why this latest increased effort to get rid of the most offending of the lot? Maybe Google is aware of the statistics on the declining average conversion rate for online retailing referred to in this 5/24/06 blog post entitled "The State of Online Retailing". End-user searchers demand a good, fast, and relevant "click through" experience, so maybe that's the answer? In any case, Google is now going to have to continually police all the AdWords ads and the AdSense ads to ensure a better user-searcher experience. It should be interesting to see how, and if, they catch all the "mice".
7/13/06 UPDATE: "An Ounce of Prevention.." may have prevented what is now happening with the "Google Quality Score". This Threadwatch.org post entitled "Google Adwords Quality Score - Set to Pilage and Plunder" says, in effect, that the cure may be worse than the disease. Google may have gotten its own fingers caught in their own moustrap as this WebmasterWorld.com thread on "Google Adwords" (a "well worth it" paid subscription may be necessary) asks for the "total amount of money you won't be spending on AdWords now due to the changes. Based on what I've seen so far ... it's in the millions already." This 7/11/06 thread is 5 pages long now, and even Google's "AdWords Basics" Discussion Forum has many irate customers.
Animated image courtesy of www.artie.com.
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