Adwords Updates Landing Page Quality Algorithm

This is something I was meaning to post last week, but I was busy slaying Tuna in the North Carolina Outer Banks, but alas I am back and hard at work here.

Google announced last week that they will be updating how adwords evaluates landing pages. There are two points to take away from this announcement:

1. If you use content network, they will be incorporating landing page quality across contextual targeted ads

and

2. The algorithm for evaluating landing pages is being “improved” but will not affect most advertisers.

It seems to me that with #2 they are placing more relevance and importance on the content of a landing page, which means if you don’t have good content on your landing pages, you better get on with updating it if you don’t want your bids to increase.

As always, landing page quality will not affect your position that you are bidding for, but it can affect your minimum bid. Adwords uses the landing page quality factor along with quality score in order to determine an advertisers minimum bid.

*I didn’t even think about the effect this could have over advertisers right before the holiday season, although I don’t think it is going to be a big deal, people are already chastising Google for this move. Here is a Roundup on the Topic