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March 11 2008
AdWords to cost more?
If you’re using Google AdWords then you better make sure that your server is in order, or you may see an increase in the cost of your AdWords campaign warns Google.
According to a story on Google’s Inside AdWords blog Google is planning to crack down on AdWord users who have landing pages that take too long to load.
The policy will begin over the next few weeks with the addition of a load-time feature to the keyword analysis page in AdWords, which will Google will then use in the 'Quality Score' used to determine the placement each ad receives when matched with a search result.
After the tool is in place, advertisers will be given one month to make changes and speed up load times before Google begins levying penalties.
Once the penalties are in place, AdWords users will begin to see their quality scores drop.
The lower score will also raise a user's minimum bid which determines the minimum cost an advertiser can pay per click.
Google said that several factors can hamper loading time, the most common being slow servers and multiple page redirects.
"Users have the best experience when they don't have to wait a long time for landing pages to load," said the Inside AdWords team.
"They are also more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate."
Slow loading pages help no one, so Google maybe doing us all a favour by penalising slow antiquated servers. If you haven’t checked the speed of your pages recently then perhaps it’s time you started. And while you’re at it, go and dig out the contract with your host and see if there’s any mention of response times. If there isn’t then perhaps it’s time to change hosts.
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