Adwords began calculating Quality Scores for ads for each consumer search in the later half of 2008. Part of the new calculation is page load time. You'll learn What is page load time, how does it affect your Quality Score and what can you do to improve it.

What does page load time mean?

Page load time is the time it takes for your page to render after it is requested. The life cycle of a page is straight forward.

1) The request for the page is made

2) The server will perform any server side processing, like dynamically generating content or accessing a database. When the page is completely constructed, it will proceed to the next step. NOTE: Static HTML pages do not have server side rendering, only PHP, JSP or ASP.NET pages have server side processing.

3) The server begins transmitting the response over the internet

4) The client computer receives the response

5) The client begins rendering the response in a browser window. Additional requests are made for flash scripts, graphics and javascript.

6) When the page is completely rendered, and all other requests are complete, the page has loaded.

Adwords must really be measuring the time from the request until the response is read. I doubt Google can actually be attempting to time to render the page on the client, and make the child request for graphics and so forth. Google would have to add some javascript code to the page in order to know when the client side rendering was complete. I seriously doubt they would do this.

How does it affect your Quality Score?

Google has this to say about why it considers page load time.

Based on this paragraph it seems Google is trying to crack down Advertisers using server side redirects and interstitial/ad pages. A server side redirect would be when the destination url is requested, the server side scripting language redirects the request to another url. This really performs two request, and thus increases the page load time. An interstitial page is an advertisement page that is shown (briefly) before the content, and may be achieved with a redirect.

It also seems that Google is saying if your page takes to much to respond, it's likely doing something sneaky.

What can you do to improve your page load time?

1) Optimize your server side scripting
If you do use PHP, JSP or ASP.NET, make sure your server side code is optimized. This is especially true when using a database. You need to optimize both your database, and your code for speed.

2) Get dedicated web hosting
Most cheap web hosting happens on a shared server. That means that many websites from many website authors are all on the same server. All of these websites compete for server resources, like bandwidth and memory. Heavy traffic to some other website on a shared server can slow your page load time. A dedicated server is one where only your website(s) resides at. It's more expensive, but you get dedicated resources.

3) Compress the size of your page
A web page is really just a file. That file must be transmitted from your server to the client computer over the internet. If you can decrease the size of the file, the file will transmit faster. You can compress your pages by removing whitespace. You can remove any unncessary HTML tags. You can use relative urls instead of absolute urls. Do anything to decrease the size of the file.

4) Lose the Flash Animation
Flash animation is generally rendered on the client side, so it may not factor into the Page Load time. But then again it may. Either way, Flash animation tends to be slow, so get rid of it for the sake of your customers. Sure it looks great, but you can't afford to lose sales because nobody waits around for the Flash animation load.

5) Strip out unnecessary elements from the page
Again, elements rendering on the client may not affect the page load time. Then again they just might. Remove any unnecessary graphics or images. These take a long time to load. Minimize javascript or CSS includes. Additional requests need to made for these files, so keep it to a minimum.

6) Optimize your page
As a final effort, you can optimize the HTML itself. For example, table HTML tags tend to render slower than a CSS/Div layout. If you have tables, you might consider switching to a CSS/Div layout.

Cookie Stuffing is a dubious method of generating Affiliate sales. Affiliates who use cookie stuffing are hoping to get commissions on sales they did not make. It is a method of affiliate fraud.

Marketplaces like ClickBank exist to help merchants promote products. The idea is that an affiliate marketer will promote a product, and in return for his expense, time and effort the merchant gives him a percent of the sale. ClickBank makes every effort to protect the effort of the affiliate marketer. ClickBank has a policy that if a consumer visits an affiliate marketers website and leaves, the affiliate will still get credit for the sale if the consumer comes back to purchase the product in 60 days. The affiliate will get credit if consumer makes the purchase up to 60 days after the initial contact. This protects the affiliate since many consumers do not make purchases on the first visit.

ClickBank has to track the consumer for 60 days to enforce this policy. It is done through a cookie. A cookie is a piece of information stored on the consumer's computer. The cookie is written to the consumers computer when the affiliate website is browsed, and the "hoplink" is clicked. The cookie records that the affiliate was responsible for the sales lead. The cookie remains on the consumer's computer for 60 days. Should the consumer return and purchase the product, the cookie is read and the original affiliate receives credit for the sale.

The presence of the cookie is what has lead to cookie stuffing. The premise is to write ClickBank cookies on a visitor's computer without the visitor's knowledge. Should that visitor happen to purchase a product in 60 days, the affiliate will get credit for a sale.

For example, imagine a blog comment or a forum post where an affiliate has managed to place an image tag that points to his hoplink. The affiliate wants these image tags to be on pages with high amounts of traffic. Every visitor who views that page will see a broken image tag. Behind the scenes, the ClickBank cookie with the affiliates code has just been written to the visitor's computer. Any high traffic website will do. The more people that view the page, the more cookies will be written. Should any of these visitors happen to purchase the product in 60 days the affiliate will get the credit for the sale.

The affiliate marketer simply has to spam as many websites as possible with his image tag (or javascript popup or iframe tag). The more people that end up with his cookie, the more sales he'll get credit for.

All affiliate programs are vulnerable to this type of fraud. ClickBank and other market places will ban affiliates for this practice. However, it may take some time before the fraud is noticed. In addition, cookie stuffers constantly find better means of hiding their tracks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, avoid the Content Network. A seasoned Adwords user may use it, but track your ROI closely. I'm willing to bet you aren't getting much. If you are beginner, stay away from the Content Network. Some other marketer will tell you to separate bids for Search and Content, but that just doesn't address the underlying problem.

The reason to avoid the Content Network is the poor quality of traffic. Content Network traffic is traffic from Adsense Publishers. Adsense Publishers are individual websites that have put up Adsense ads and are collecting revenue for every click.

The problem is that Adsense Publishers don't care about the quality of traffic they send. I'm speaking from experience, as I participate in Adsense. The prevailing school of Adsense thought is to make your Adsense ads blend into your content. As a publisher, you don't want visitors to recognize the links as ads. The goal here is to make it look just like a regular link, and not an ad to another website. In other words, you are tricking the consumer. This is a completely valid Adsense tactic and is in wide use. But, consider the visitor who got tricked into clicking the link. How motivated is that visitor? Do you think that confused visitor is likely to provide any ROI?

In addition, all kinds of less than valid tactics have been employed to get Adsense clicks. The most common a few years back was to place graphics over the ads, which makes the links look less like ads and further confuses visitors. Other tactics include make Adsense ads look like navigation links. I'm sure you've seen these that look like navigation tabs or a left navigation menu.

Next you have the Adsense farm or Made for Adsense websites. These are the websites that are nothing but Adsense ads. Here are a few examples...

• best3websites.com
• ToSeekA.com
• seekful.com

Are you seriously going to pay for traffic from these spam websites?

Finally there is the fraud issue. We've all heard of the fraud that occurs with Adsense. I've read that 30% of clicks may be fraudulent, but I have no evidence to support that number. But, I can guarantee that there is some fraud happening. You simply can't avoid it entirely.

Here is a quote from a comment by Michael Martinez on Matt Cutts blog http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/better-click-tracking-with-auto-tagging/

Just separate search bids from content bids. Every time someone recommends the Content Network, they acknowledge the above problems, but then they say just separate the bids like it is a cure all. That doesn't address the quality issues. The traffic is not going to convert. Sure, you can pay $0.05 per click versus $0.50 per click, but you are still getting low quality. Do you want to throw away even $0.05 per click or would you rather not participate?

Rick Strahl rants about his poor quality traffic on his blog http://west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/302826.aspx.

If your advice is to use the Content Network or simply separate the bids, you are going to have to produce the statistical evidence that you are getting an ROI from the Content Network.

Use a placement campaign instead. The alternative to the pure Content Network campaign is the placement campaign. Adwords allows you to hand pick the websites your ads will appear on. You can pick reputable websites that prominently display ads. Reputable websites do not engage in click fraud. You can weed out all of the Made for Adsense websites.

I recommend you just opt out of the content network. If you want Adsense traffic, use a placement campaign. If you simply must use the Content Network, track your ROI and watch it close. Make sure you are getting a return on your investment.

Google began determining a Quality Score per search for Adwords Ads in September of 2008. Prior to this time, a Quality Score was determined once and used across multiple searches. Determining Quality Score per search gave Google the opportunity to use geo-targeting. Learn what this means and how you can use it to your advantage.

Geo-targeting is when Google boosts an Ads Quality Score, thus giving it higher ad positions, traffic and CTR based on the geographic location of the advertisers. Google determines the geographic region of the consumer by checking his IP Address. Google must check the geographic region of the advertiser by the IP Address of the landing page. If both the consumer and advertiser are in the same geographic region, the advertisers ad will get a Quality Score boost.

Could geo-targeting hurt a nationwide or global campaign?

Potentially, yes. A nationwide or global campaign may face competition in metropolitan areas. If other advertisers in these metropolitan areas are deemed "local" merchants, they could get Quality Score boosts. This lowers the ad position of the nationwide or global advertiser. A lower position results in less clicks and less CTR. This damages the Quality Score further, resulting in lower positions and higher costs per click.

Is it good for the consumer?

One large appeal of the internet is to be able to view goods and service offered by merchants outside of a local area. If the internet offers no more diversification than driving around town, the internet is likely to some of it's appeal.

How can you use this to your advantage?

Adwords experts often recommend using a high cost per click for two or three weeks to get a high CTR. When a CTR becomes established, you can often lower the CPC bid with losing ad position because of the high CTR.

You could use a similar tactic with geo-targeting. You could limit your Adwords ad to run only in the geographic region where your hosting service is located. You would then get a Quality Score boost from the geo-targeting, result in higher ad positions. High ad positions translate to better CTR. Then after two or three weeks at a good CTR, you can allow you ad to running nationwide or globally while still reaping the benefits of a high CTR.

Also, you could have two identical or similar websites, one hosted on the East Coast of the United States and the other hosted on the West Coast. You could target your ads for specific regions, and send visitors to the correct website for their region. Perhaps more granularity is needed than just East Coast versus West Coast, but you get the idea.

You've read the Adwords Strategy Guide and Advanced Guide. You have implemented all the techniques to get to a Good Quality Score. But, Adwords has still assigned you a Poor Quality Score. What do you do? The following list of items are the things you want to check to raise that poor Quality Score.

(1) What is Adwords saying is wrong?

Adwords provides some diagnostic information when they assign a poor Quality Score. Take a look inside Adwords and see why Adwords gave you the poor score. When you know what Google thinks is wrong, you can attack the problem. Adwords reports on three categories of problems.

(a) Keyword relevance
Generally this means you have a poor CTR. More on how to fix it in a moment.

(b) Landing Page
This means your Landing Page is not tailored to your keyword. Create a unique landing page for your keyword and optimize the page for it.

(c) Landing Page Load Time
Your Landing Page was too slow. Start removing images, javascripts, stylesheets and any other elements not directly related to your message.

(2) How is the CTR of the ad?

Once you begin to get traffic (impressions) of your ads, the CTR becomes a major factor in the quality score. Google is letting the human consumers determine if your ad is relevant to their searches. If the ad is relevant, human consumers click your ad and the CTR goes up. If the human consumers don't click your ad, the CTR goes down. Google alters the quality score based on the CTR. It's a survival of the fittest ad when you begin to get impressions.

The rule is you must have a half percent CTR to maintain a Quality Score. But, I recommend shooting for a 2% or 3% CTR. If you don't have a CTR of at least 0.5% you should do one of the following...

(a) Improve the sales copy of the ad.
This is crucial if you want to keep the keyword. Your ad needs to be compelling enough to make consumer want to click it. If you don't have a 0.5% CTR your ad isn't doing it's job.

(b) Increase the max CPC bid.
You can increase the max CPC to get a higher ad position. A higher CPC bid means higher ad position, more traffic, and (hopefully) more CTR. After you have achieved a CTR of 2 or 3% for two weeks, you can start lowering you CPC bid because the CTR is likely boosting your Quality Score, and you can maintain the higher ad position without spending as much.

(c) Delete the keyword.
The Quality Score of your entire campaign can be damaged by poor performing keywords. Delete them if you can't keep the CTR above 0.5%.

(3) Revise your Landing Page.

Can you optimize the landing page more? I assume you have the keyword in the page title, meta tags and heading tags. Have you used it throughout your sales copy as well? Adwords likes to see the keyword in the content. Assuming you have read the Advanced Guide, you can still use PHP to dynamically insert the keyword just like you did for the page title and meta tags.