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What is the Google Slap?
We don't know what Google calls it internally, but it has been "affectionately" termed "The Google Slap". That's as good a name as any, so the rest of us in the AdWords community have adopted that name.
The slap is best described in terms of symptoms:
- Bids (i.e. Max cost per click) on keywords going up, making keywords inactive (showing "inactive for search" and "increase quality or bid to activate").
- High minimum bids, such as $1, $5, $10.
The punchline is that it's really all about the "quality score".
Or more specifically: quality score for a keyword in your adgroup. (more on that later)
What does Google Do the Google Slap?
Google wants a relevant "Message To Market Match" - Relevant search results for what people want.
I like to call it the "chain of relevancy".
1. Person searches on Google for an answer to a problem.
2. Person clicks on ad with a preconceived notion of what the landing page will have.
3. The page title matches the search.
4. The landing page has the content that the person wants.
Google wants users to be happy when they come to your site. They want
people to find what they were looking for. If you try to trick the search
engines, you always have to play catch up and will eventually lose.
Increasing Quality Score and getting "un-slapped" - tip #2
Strive to have keywords that are laser targeted to your product/service. 3-word keywords tend to be especially good. Single-word keywords tend to be un-targeted, and get slapped.
Increasing Quality Score and getting "un-slapped" - tip #7
If you have AdSense on your landing pages, then get rid of it right now (only exception is if you're doing "Adwords-to-AdSense arbitrage").
You can still have AdSense on other pages. But don't have it on landing pages. Google wants to see content on your landing pages - not ads.
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