Is Google 'Out to Get' AdWords Advertisers?

This is an abridged excerpt from Chapter 2 of Andrew Goodman's forthcoming Winning Results With Google AdWords, Second Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2008).

Because Google's paid search program has so many complex rules, advertisers are often shocked at how difficult it is to get their way. After all, it is advertising. Shouldn't money talk? Well, that's not the thinking over at the Googleplex. To understand the mindset is to understand how best to approach the overall task of paid search advertising, so let's dive in.

It just seems like common sense. Wouldn't it be a good idea for a company that derives its revenues from search advertising to pay closer attention to the needs of its hundreds of thousands of advertisers? Don't be so sure. Google has never "sold out" by relaxing editorial rules. It has continued to test user responses to changes in the ad program as the primary yardstick of progress.

Individual advertisers, left to their own devices as rational single actors, would always request more prominent exposure for less money. Depending on the prices of the ads, they don't always care that much about relevance.

That's exactly what Google felt it needed to guard against when it designed the rules of its ad program. Google has always been paranoid that search engine users would become dissatisfied with the look and feel of the results.

So, Google decided to build relevance requirements right into the design of the bidding platform,and implemented a wide range of strictly enforced editorial policies.

Advertisers grappling with the most recent version of AdWords wonder: how come it's often prohibitively expensive to advertise on some terms? Why does Google seem to set the bar so high in terms of the "quality" and "relevance" (in the form of high minimum bids which effectively stop you from advertising on some of the keywords you'd like to appear on)?

The bottom line is, search engine users still expect certain kinds of search queries to be largely unfettered by sponsored links. If no ads at all are relevant to a given query, Google simply shows no ads. Recent figures from comScore show that Yahoo and Microsoft show ads next to about 75% of all search queries. Google is more cautious in its monetization efforts, at 58%.

If users don't tend to click on ads in some categories of search (let's say the names of archaeologists), ads will tend not to show up because Google's system is gently discouraging advertisers from advertising on those terms.

On some commercially-oriented queries, clickthrough rates are so high on ads that it's hard to dispute that the ads are more relevant than any other type of result the search engine shows. Indeed, on commercial queries, some sponsored listings are expected by users. Controversies over whether users are "confused" by poorly-labeled sponsored listings peaked around 2003, but have dwindled steadily since.

In part, that's because Google has worked to provide a customized mix of results based on apparent searcher intent. It's also working on personalized search.

With the formal announcement of an approach to search called Universal Search, Google has put a name to the experimentation, making it clear that its goal will be to put useful information in front of searchers, and that information today is not necessarily going to be a web page. Various Google information services, such as Google Local, will be featured, but so will objects such as images, audio podcasts, video, and more.

In terms of the balance between paid and organic listings, what all of this does is to add complexity to gaining visibility on the so-called "organic" side, while leaving the status and privileges accorded to the paid AdWords advertiser largely untouched. In a way, then, the paid search program seems like a more certain way than ever to break through the clutter and unpredictability of the search medium, because those sponsored listing positions are deployed consistently.

Taken in this light, it is quite plausible to claim that sponsored links often lead to an increase in the perceived relevancy and helpfulness of pages of results. Some queries, after all, truly are commercial in nature. In its perverse way, then, Google is actually supporting you as an advertiser, by reinforcing user confidence in what they see on the page. That includes your ad.

Andrew Goodman is the Principal at Page Zero Media, and author, Winning Results with Google AdWords (McGraw-Hill, second edition due out February 2008).