‘Quality’ Score? More Revenue for Google

Google’s recent changes to ‘Quality’ score and Minimum bids again raise questions?

It was only a few months ago that Google removed the restriction of bidding on brand term keywords. This created huge controversy and prompted the reaction from the major brands in the market to join sides and avoid bidding on each others brands. Some kept their word and others didn’t as expected.

However, the fact remains that Google is now generating higher volumes of revenue from this simple move. The advertisers pay more to appear on competitors keywords, Google makes more money.

The next step in this process has now been to remove the minimum bid requirements. These were previously in place to give Google the right to stop irrelevant listings from appearing if their Quality Score was too low. This now means that you can bid on any keyword you want as long as you pay the right price.

Google suggest that the ‘Quality’ Score will still be in place to reward and promote the more relevant advertisers and suppress the irrelevant ones. But how much impact will this now have?

Are Google taking a step backward when it comes to providing relevancy? If users are searching on a keyword they want to find a relevant website not an advertiser who has paid top whack to appear at the top.