I have a major problem with Google playing high & mighty and scoring landing pages/sites and factoring that QualityScore into an advertiser’s minimum bid. Google has standardized the lion’s share of their advertising on a CPC-basis. The basic premise of a CPC pricing model is that an advertiser buys the visitor from Google, and are free to do with that visitor what they want.

I applaud Google for not allowing ads that link to pages with pop-ups, phishing sites, etc. They have certainly made the web a safer place to surf by imposing their limits. I was talking to a client about Google’s implied editorial endorsement. Your ad benefits from being in a box that says “Ads by Google”. Its a very easy way for Google to transfer some tiny bit of brand equity to your site. It says “Google has deemed your Ad good enough to run on our network”. Admit it, if Google opened a coffee shop or auto dealer in your town, it would immediately be the coolest lounge (for geeks) or the most fair car dealer. Everything Google touches turns to Gold.

However, with their post today on the AdWords blog, they are starting to show that its not about protecting their users (their “true north”), its about protecting their users for the right price. For me, this one line said it all “The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably”. You can still run your scams, you can’t just do it affordably. Or, read differently, we realize that your site is probably a scam, but we’ll still sell you a user if you pay us more.

If Google asked, and they have not, I would propose the following:

1. If you want to protect user experience, have a standard and stand by it. If its not good enough for Google, don’t run the ad, regardless of price. The user doesn’t know/care if Google charged $.10/click or $10.00/click.
2. If you are going to score websites, you should give them clear-cut guidelines on what you are looking for. If changes are made, allow them to see how that change affects their QualityScore either negatively or positively.
3. The min. bid could be high for a number of reasons, most are due to campaign set-up, structure, negative matching, ad text, etc. If those are the issue, fine. If its the landing page, alert us!
4. Come out with clear-cut details on how rich-media pages are scored. Is Flash positive for user-interaction? Is it a negative?

Would love to hear from other agencies out there - do you think that Google is being overreaching and under-informing?