Has Google Changed Their Adwords Algorithm To Lower Your Ad Rank?

Submitted by Mike Adams on Sun, 05/01/2005 - 6:51pm

Has Google changed their algorithm for calculating the position of your AdWords ads? Until now, the rank (position) of a Google AdWords ad has been calculated based on the cost per click (CPC) you are paying and the clickthrough rate (CTR) for a given keyword.

But there is an interesting thread in the WebmasterWorld.com forum that says this may have recently changed. It appears now that Google is using the CTR for the entire ad, not just for a given keyword. This sounds like a minor change, but it could actually be a major change, if true. This means two of the best strategies for improving response to Google Ad Words ads could cost you more per click now:

1. It is common practice to bid on many, many keywords - even hundreds and thousands. This would mean that any unsuccessful keywords that are pulling down your average CTR would also pull down the position/rank of your best performing keywords.

2. One of the best capabilities of Google AdWords has been the ability to do split testing - to test multiple ads for the same keywords to see which produces better results. But this would mean the poorer performing versions would now be pulling down the ranking for the top performing ads.

People are already complaining that ads, especially new ads, are costing about 20% more than before, so this is quite an impact.