Undoubtedly in response to numerous questions from concerned and confused Google Adwords advertisers, Google has posted an explanation of its Quality Score changes on its Adwords blog.

In short, here are Google’s responses to the main three issues on advertisers’ minds:

1. How will Quality Score be calculated?

Google will STILL consider (a) the historic performance of you account, evaluating the clickthrough rate (CTR) of all the ads and keywords in that account; and (b) your landing page quality. However, although Google will evaluate your overall Quality Score at the time of each search query, it will evaluate landing page quality less frequently.

2. What’s the impact of the removal of ‘Inactive for Search Status’?

Google believes that by making all keywords active it will better be able to evaluate keywords for any query where they may be relevant. The company has acknowledged that keywords previously marked as ‘inactive for search’ would otherwise never show ads on Google.com, even where they might have been a high quality match for certain queries. Now it’s giving such keywords a chance.

3. What’s the difference between ‘first page bid estimates’ and the old ‘minimum bids’?

Google says that for queries that don’t have much advertiser competition, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with lots of advertiser competition may have much higher first page bid estimates. This is because you’ll probably need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than the competition and show on the first page of paid search results.

Source: Trevor Claiborne, “Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days”, Inside Adwords, September 15, 2008

(Note: Stomping The Search Engines 2 launches TODAY at 2pm EST: Click Here To Get Stomping The Search Engines 2 For Free)

Yesterday, I reviewed the Stomping The Search Engines 2 home-study course. (To read the review go here Stomping The Search Engines 2 Review). At the end of the review I indicated that the guys behind the course, Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon, were going to price it at one price… before deciding to make it so that EVERYONE would be able to get this course.

That wasn’t hype.

Originally, the price of this course was going to be $497.

But after Andy and Brad’s change of heart, the price of the course is now… $0

That’s right, you can get the entire DVD-ROM course for FREE. You only pay for shipping and handling (and that’s a real shipping and handling cost – not a padded one).

What’s the catch?

The “catch” is that when you order the course, you also agree to trial StomperNet’s Internet marketing journal, The Net Effect. (I also discussed that in yesterday’s review). The first issue is free but there is an ongoing charge of $39 per month after that. BUT you can easily cancel… yes, that means you can EASILY cancel (without being upsold or messed around).

StomperNet are, of course, hoping you won’t cancel. Otherwise they are taking a huge risk with this offer. But it truly is up to you whether you want to continue with your subscription or not.

Regardless, and given that canceling is not going to be a problem, there really is no reason NOT to order Stomping The Search Engines 2.

I said yesterday that the course won’t be suitable for either search engine optimization experts OR anyone who doesn’t intend to follow through on the work required for SEO success. While I stand by that, the course may still be worth getting purely to see how a high-quality home-study course is put together!

Seriously, though, if SEO is on your radar, make sure you get this course. Also, order it as soon as it becomes available at 2pm EST today, Wednesday September 3, 2008.

I say that because there is likely to be a HUGE rush for this course, and you don’t want to end up waiting for your copy in case StomperNet rapidly runs out of its initial batch of stock.

So put a reminder in your Outlook / Thunderbird / calendar / alarm to click here at 2pm EST:

==> Get Stomping The Search Engines 2 For Free

Wednesday 2pm EST is:

• Wednesday 11am in Los Angeles
• Wednesday 7pm in London
• Thursday 4am in Sydney
• Thursday 3am in Tokyo

==> Get Stomping The Search Engines 2 For Free

Source: Stomping The Search Engines 2.0

Yesterday, well known Internet marketer John Reese launched his much anticipated Traffic Secrets 2.0 internet marketing course.

I was impressed with the original Traffic Secrets course (bought a few years ago) and have since respected John Reese for both the way he thinks and the way he run his business. Although I have not seen the new version, I have every reason to believe that it will be a high quality course.

But who else would like to see a genuine, objective review of this (and other courses put out by Internet marketers) to help inform their buying decision?

No, not a “review” by an affiliate or a friend… an objective review by someone who is (a) qualified to comment, and (b) doesn’t have anything to lose or gain by giving us their honest opinion.

Do high profile Internet marketers actually make their products available to respected, independent people to review? My guess is no - mainly because they probably have little to gain, and possibly a great deal to lose, by providing their products for review.

Perhaps Internet marketers are smarter than those in the software and entertainment industries where product reviews are prevalent. Perhaps they know that there’s more to gain by turning reviewers into affiliates and affiliates into reviewers. And perhaps would-be reviewers also like the idea of providing a review that ends with an affiliate link.

But I still see the potential for this to change. Product reviews - both by experts and peers - are being used by an estimated 83 percent of online consumers. And with the growing popularity of Internet marketing product review forums such as the Warrior Forum’s Internet Marketing Product Reviews & Ratings sub-forum, we may see more info-product consumers demanding objective guidance before they hand over their hard earned cash for something.

If this happens, expect to see more product launches involving a pre-release to non-affiliate, independent, reviewers, as occurs in the publishing, music and movie industries.

In the meantime, I WAS impressed by the audio review of Traffic Secrets 2 given by Andy Jenkins, co-founder of StomperNet. StomperNet IS an affiliate for Traffic Secrets but the review was very thorough and convincing. You can listen to it here: http://www.stompernet.net/TSReview/ (and no, this is NOT an affiliate link!)

Source: Anna Johnson, “83 Percent of Consumers Use Online Product Reviews”, Kikabink News, July 10, 2008

According to JupiterResearch, online marketers will spend $2.1 billion on affiliate marketing fees in 2008… and up to $3.3 billion in 2012.

JupiterResearch’s report, “US Online Affiliate Marketing Forecast”, indicates that many merchants are attracted to affiliate marketing programs because they are performance based, present low risk, and require low initial investments.

The report does note that because affiliate marketing is reliant on the search engine marketing industry, Google is a “wild card” that may affect the overall growth of the industry. For example, the cost-effectiveness of running a pay-per-click advertising campaign on Google depends on the ability of a given affiliate to achieve high Quality Scores for its landing pages.

Barring some kind of disaster, we too can only see affiliate marketing grow into the future. We see particular potential for more large corporates – those who have already found success with search marketing - to profit from signing up potentially huge networks of complementary online businesses as affiliates.

In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Source: JupiterResearch, “JupiterResearch Finds That Online Affiliate Marketing Spending Will Continue to Grow, Reaching $3.3 Billion in 2012″, JupiterResearch, June 16, 2008