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Google has incorporated a new factor to its Quality Score. If you're advertising with Google AdWords, this new factor might influence the position of your ads and the minimum price you have to pay for your bids.

What is Google's Quality Score?

Google's Quality Score is Google's method to evaluate the position and the minimum bid of a text ad in Google AdWords. Google hasn't reveal ed all details about the Quality Score. All we knoe is that the text of an ad and the clickthrough rate are important factors that influence the position of your ad and the minimum price you have to pay per click.

Last week, Google announced that it would also include the landing page in the calculation of the Quality Score. That means that the web page that is linked to an AdWords ad will also be analyzed to determine the position and the price for the ad.

What does this mean to your AdWords ads?

If you bid for many different keywords, it might be that the prices for keywords that are only loosely related to your web site go up for you. The less a web page is related to the keyword, the more you have to pay to get an AdWords listing for that keyword.

What can you do to lower your per click prices?

To pay as little as possible for a click, you have to follow Google's quality guidelines. The better your ad, the less you have to pay per click:

• Make sure that your AdWords ads have compelling titles that inform web surfers about what they can expect on your site.
  
  
• Use interesting descriptions that are related to the keyword. If possible, include a call to action or a reason to click in your descriptions.
  
  
• Create more PPC landing pages that are directly related to your keywords.
  
  
• Make sure that your landing pages are relevant to what web surfers are looking for.

Google's latest change in the Quality Score won't hurt you if your ads are compliant to these points.

If you want to get detailed information on how to optimize your landing pages and if you want to know how you can lower your AdWords costs while increasing your sales, you might want to take a look at our Google AdWords eBook.

Yahoo releases Yahoo Answers

"When it comes to locating facts, such as the capital of India, web search rocks. But there are many times that keywords just don't cut it—times when you need to ask a question to a group of humans. You know, real people. That's what Yahoo! Answers was designed for."

Yahoo upgrades widget engine

"Yahoo launched a new version of its widget engine, a platform for running mini desktop applications built by Yahoo or third-party developers for search, photo and mapping services, and other functions."

Yahoo! buys bookmarking community

"Yahoo! on Friday said it acquired the bookmark-sharing site Del.icio.us. [...] The move comes less than a year after Yahoo! acquired Flickr, an online photo-sharing site that, like Del.icio.us, derives its value from user interaction."

Microsoft search revenue plans

"Microsoft Corp. may share its online search revenue with consumers, according to a presentation in India last week by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. [...] Gates says that Microsoft may woo consumers to use MSN Search by offering cash, free content or software."

Search engine newslets

• Lyocs releases the top 100 search terms of 2005.
• MSN releases Windows Live Local.
• Google relaunches Google Catalogs.
• Noxtrum is a new Spanish search engine.
• Ask Jeeves releases a new toolbar for Firefox.
• Google Transit is a new trip planner service.
• Ohnorobot is a search engine just for comic strips.
• Google's calculator sometimes returns wrong results.

"Amid the hoopla of Google's soaring share price, which has doubled to $400 (U.S.) this year, the Yahoo CEO said his most aggressive competitor 'doesn't seem to have a real plan.' Google was rolling out initiatives every other week, but its strategy lacked focus."

And, like the billboard, his words carried a bigger message: Google may be smart, but Yahoo thinks it's smarter.

Will the AOL-MSN talks outcome point to a new era in vendor-network synergy?

"One gets the impression that how Time Warner goes with AOL — a sweet deal with Google or a sweeter deal with Microsoft — portends sweeping and frightening changes in the mega-corporation keiretsu landscape."

Search execs: big brands muscling out small players

"Branding-focused advertisers are willing to spend whatever it takes to get their keywords listed. [...] In part, the expenditures are based on simply wanting their keywords to show at the top [...]

There's a vanity aspect of this from a marketing standpoint, and that's surprising."

Gunning for Google

"Competitors talk about what, if anything, could slow down the search engine giant. [...] It's tough to figure out which physics cliché best describes Google. Is it more like an irresistible force or the immovable object?"

Just Google 'thou shalt not steal'

"It's a strange experience to see your own property in someone else's possession when they haven't asked your permission for it or paid for it. It's disorienting and infuriating. You've been robbed. That's how it feels when something of yours suddenly appears in cyberspace, whether it's a chair or a book excerpt, a table or a newspaper column."

Every day, we get feature requests for ARELIS, our link management software, and we really appreciate them. As there is a great interest, we want to confirm that we are all working like crazy on the latest version of ARELIS.

To whet your appetite: there will be 15 major new features in the next ARELIS version and about 150 small improvements. Best of all, it will be a free update for all ARELIS users.

Unfortunately, we can't tell you about the new features yet (our competitors read this newsletter, too :-), but rest assured we are very excited about all the new features and we're certain that you'll love them.

A concrete release date has not been set yet. We're targeting Q1/2006 for the first beta version.

If you purchase the current ARELIS version, the new ARELIS version will be a free update for you (although it will have many more features than the current version).

ARELIS has received another 5 out of 5 stars rating. This time, ivertech.com was so impressed by the quality of ARELIS that it gave ARELIS the highest rating:

"ARELIS is a top-rated software program that helps you to build a powerful business network quickly and easily.

Your business will benefit in many ways from that network: You'll get highly targeted visitors to your web site, you'll benefit from new business contacts and your web site will get a higher ranking on search engines because of higher link popularity.

ARELIS helps you to establish many high quality reciprocal links that point to your web site. It is the first software program that provides a serious, spam-free reciprocal links solution for professional webmasters."

IBP is now available in three languages: English, German and Dutch

When you download IBP you can switch the language in the "File" menu in IBP. English and German are included in the download. If you want to have a Dutch IBP version, download this file.

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