Changes to Google's Terms and Conditions - Important

[agreen]

I came across this 'subtle' change that Google has in their Terms and Conditions that will have a large effect on the PPC program in the future. Basically, Google is going to analyze landing pages from now on and assign you (the advertiser) a better quality score if your landing page is more relevant. Thus, as a company we can use this information as a "tool" to sell customers on re-designing landing pages for their PPC campaigns.

I copied the text below.

What changes have you made to the Terms and Conditions?

One of the main changes you may notice in the new Google Advertising Program Terms is that the terms anticipate future advertising products that may become available in other advertising formats and mediums. As we look forward to integrating more advertising products, we've re-worded some portions of the terms to make them applicable across a broader array of mediums and formats--anticipating, for example, that future products may be priced, billed, or managed differently than the current products.

We've also added some language to anticipate Google's retrieval of advertiser landing pages. To further improve program quality, our system will soon visit and evaluate all landing pages specified in AdWords ads. The quality information collected will affect AdWords account performance in the future. If a landing page has informative content related to its AdWords ads and keywords, these keywords will receive higher Quality Scores and potentially lower minimum cost-per-click bid (CPC bid) requirements. Poor quality landing pages or those that restrict visits by our system are likely to experience a decrease in quality scores (and a potential increase in CPC bid requirements). Learn more.

Additionally, due to Google's progress in making an AdWords API available, we're asking users not to "screenscrape" AdWords web pages. We believe screenscraping may negatively affect the performance of AdWords and that more efficient results can be obtained using the AdWords API.

Unfortunately, we're unable to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for you. If you have questions or you need legal advice on interpreting the terms, please don't hesitate to contact an attorney.

[agreen]

Daryl -
I believe our biggest obstacle in selling this to our clients is educating them on how this will benefit their business and why their current landing pages aren’t sufficient (which will take some research and analyzing). I would focus a good portion of our efforts on educating clients on the importance of good landing pages from the and why, according to Google, this will help conversion/sales rates. Once we have accomplished that task, then we can bring in the new Google standards and Adbots argument focusing around how relevant landing pages will improve their quality score and potentially reduce the cost they pay for higher ad positioning. As for who in the company should be making this case and calling the clients, my suggestion would be Steph. I would be happy to develop a "sales package" with her which should include the educational components I listed above.

-Adam