What’s Fresh?

There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about the latest change Google announced for the top placement of paid search ads. Some SEMs are claiming it is selling out to the highest bidder or that this will be the end of SEO. Hold on a minute! Did you actually read the Google announcement on this? This is a tweak, not a major change.

Let’s take a quick look at what this change really means. A good place to start is exactly what Google announced. Here is my summary of the announcement:

Top placement (i.e, moving from the right-hand side to above the organic results) will no longer be reliant on the actual CPC you are paying. Your maximum bid will be taken into account instead. The Quality Score will still be the primary factor of whether your ad is eligible for the top spot.

Who will this affect?

Let’s start with who it will not affect. For competitive markets, this is unlikely to have any change. Bids are high enough that even under the old model, the three spots above the organic rankings were already filled if the Quality Score is high enough.

For keywords where there is less competition, such as long-tail terms, advertisers can more readily get into the top spot regardless of what the competition is bidding, if your Quality Score is high enough. Being able to garner the position above the organic results could dramatically improve your click through rate, and could dramatically increase your monthly spend for that keyword (now we see what Google’s motivation is…).

From an SEO perspective, this could have an affect for keywords where there was rarely a paid search ad above the organic results. The likely result would be lower traffic to the organic positions. This affect is likely to be limited, because the vast majority of clicks are on organic results, even when there is a paid ad in the spot or spots above the organic results.

How does this affect ad relevance for searchers?

The top spot is still not open to the highest bidder. Google is too concerned with relevance to make that type of change. If anything, this should help relevance for searchers, because relevant advertisers can more readily get into the top spot regardless of what your competition is bidding (as long as their Quality Score is high enough).

Watch Adword Spends Carefully

While this tweak is unlikely to have a big effect across a whole campaign, it will remain important to keep an eye on spends. If a campaign sees a lot of its long-tail keyword ads moved from the right-hand side to the top stop, the cumulative effect could be a big jump in spending for the month. So, keep an eye on spends and overall, I expect that this will be a positive change for advertisers and searchers.

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