Sun Jan 06 20:02:44 PST 2019

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Google calls their price gouging a quality score, but may even be offering a bit of
misdirection in what they consider of high quality. They largely state that quality is
based on relevancy and mention things like conversion rate and clickthrough rate,
but how hard would it be for them to mix in usage data, link reputation, or other
signs of trust into their quality algorithm?
If marketers are chasing the wrong data points it is going to be hard for us to
manipulate Google?s market. But, if you give users many ways to find you and
many reasons to trust you then eventually some of that data is going to come back
to Google.
In a world where site trust matters, developing at least a base level SEO program
for your site might improve your ability to compete in the AdWords marketplace.
Hidden Message
Google?s hidden message is that they want to police the web, and they invariably
are pushing to marginalize the profits of anyone who is making a good living
without creating much real tangible value.
If the other PPC players are going to be able to compete with Google they are
going to have to do it on margins, ad price, and relevancy. Filtering out noise and
keeping their ads as relevant as possible is going to be crucial for people to keep
paying attention to their ads.
Google AdWords

Google AdWords gets its own extremely long section because Google owns ~
70% of the U.S. search market, and AdWords it is exceptionally more complicated
and feature-rich than other PPC systems, largely because Google has been more
innovative than competitors, and largely because Google wants to be the
worldwide advertising platform. Consider the following:
? To get a lead in video distribution, Google bought YouTube for $2.65
billion in stock.
? Google offers audio ads, and sells ads in newspapers and magazines.
? Google offers video ads, and even has an online ad creation marketplace
built inside AdWords.
Google vs. Yahoo!