How does Google determine the importance of a paid ad ?

These factors all affect your ad's position :

Cost Per Click - simply the amount you actually pay for the keywords/keyphrases chosen in your ad group. Note this is often not as high as your indicated "Max.bid", because AdWords works similar to an auction system, meaning you'll usually only pay 1 cent more than your next closest competitor's bid.

Click Through Ratio (CTR) - this is the percentage of people who see you ad that actually click it. Every time someone sees your ad, that's an 'impression'. When they click the link, that is, of course, a click, or visit to your site.

Quality Score - this is the area most novices misunderstand. Quality score is based on Google's interpretation of the following criteria :

• CTR - as above, the success your ad enjoys from actual clicks is one measure Google relies on to determine if it is 'useful'
• Ad text relevance - how closely the ad text matches the keyphrase you're competing for
• Historical keyphrase measure - how well has the same keyphrase performed for other advertisers in the past ?
• Landing page quality - how well does your landing page content match the keyphrase you're competing for ?

The Quality Score perhaps best demonstrates why certain very large travel organisations (with seemingly bottomless pockets!) appear to have poor-performing AdWords campaigns.

At Unearthed we believe Google AdWords and similar programs have fantastic potential to complement your organic online marketing. Paid ad capaigns are seldom justified as the only online marketing an organisation undertakes, but they are particularly well-suited to short term initiatives, new products and special time-limited offers.

We believe many larger firms 'abusing' AdWords for exposure simply because they can afford to, are usually missing some far greater opportunities from a well-structured Online Marketing Strategy.

Please talk to one of our Online Marketing team if you would like further information (see the contact section).