Google Changes Quality Score Algo for AdWords

As announced last week on the AdWords blog, Google is making some changes in the way it calculates your AdWords quality score. This will happen over the next few weeks and is based on feedback from users and advertisers.

· Removal of the minimum bid requirement. This will be replaced by “first page bid,” which is the bid estimated to get your ad on page one. All listings will be eligible to appear, and positioning will be based on quality score and maximum bid amount.

· Quality Score will now be calculated at the time of each search query.

· Keywords will no longer be judged “inactive for search.”

These changes will produce a lot more listings for any given search phrase if advertisers are willing to pay. It remains to be seen if advertisers will pay more to be on the first page. If the past is any indication, they probably will because paid search is effective, affordable and accountable if you have the advertising budget.

Google will make these quality score changes to a very small set of advertisers over the next few days with a full rollout in the coming weeks.