Adwords Site Links Raise Serious Questions

The introduction of site links for top positioned Adwords ads is the most significant reward yet for ‘high quality’ advertisers. But what does ‘high quality’ really mean and does this latest step by Google threaten to seriously change the landscape of PPC marketing?

You may have read my post on the benefits of Google Adwords Site links. To summarise – site links are a great new way for the lucky few to improve conversion rate and CTR simultaneously. In business terms, this means more volume at a greater margin.

One major gripe I have with site links is that they are only available to those companies who have a high quality score throughout their account. It’s either on for all your campaigns and ads, or it’s off. Why can this not be calculated at campaign level rather than at account level?

Surely if I can use site links effectively on the campaigns that are ‘high quality’ then it will make me clean my other campaigns up so I can buy more clicks?

Whether Google lowers the barriers for site links or calculates eligibility on a ‘per-campaign’ basis remains to be seen. The current setup appears to mirror the SEO equivalent, where only the high enough quality sites get the luxury of having a mini-sitemaps as part of their listing. The worrying thing is that, by operating site links on the current ‘all or nothing’ basis, they are effectively rewarding the big boys and the start-ups, whilst ignoring the ‘middle class’ of online marketing.

In other words, if you’re a big company you’ll be able to take the necessary landing page development steps to improve your quality score (and enable this huge feature on your account), if you’re small you’ll only be able to afford to advertise on high quality score terms anyway – but if, like the majority of online advertisers, you’re somewhere in the middle then you’re probably out of luck.

It boils down to the fact that many low quality score keywords are profitable – and these are the keywords that the big boys have the development resource to serve well and the startups aren’t able to get any profit from. Advertisers should not be penalised for having profitable keywords but rewarded for making them even more profitable. By preventing them from using site links on the campaigns (or keywords) that do have high quality scores, Google is effectively penalising advertisers who make profits in this way.

If this strategy continues, the landscape of PPC marketing could be in for some dramatic changes.

Should Google allow site links on a ‘per campaign’ basis or stick to its current ‘per account’ structure?