We discovered this strange anomaly a few days ago with one of our bigger ‘online’ branded advertisers, no longer we’re any ‘.com’ derivitaves showing up in the daily AdWords account reports. Our team later dug into a few other branded advertiser accounts and noticed the same anomaly occurring.

Proof:
After logging into the respective AdWords accounts for each client and confirming that we were indeed bidding on more than one ‘.com’ keyword variations; we went online to search for their listings. What did we find? Nothing, that’s right not even a forced ‘match type’ to the existing brand term – there were no listings from AdWords whatsoever.

Why has Google decided to remove these profitable, and high converting terms from our results pages – I mean we are trying to even pay for them?

Check for yourself – click a Top Brand ‘.com’ term below:
Sony.com (0 Paid Listings – screenshot)
Ford.com (0 Paid Listings – screenshot)
Pepsi.com (0 Paid Listings – screenshot)
Match.com (0 Paid Listings – screenshot)

Now try the same Top Brand terms without the ‘.com’:
Sony (4 Paid Listings)
Ford (20+ Paid Listings)
Pepsi (2 Paid Listings)
Match (5 Paid Listings)

Google’s Quality Index History:
Looks like Google has always been refining their ‘Quality Index’ or QI scoring algorithm, as evidenced with their recent additions of the ‘back relevancy’ survey and now scoring the paid advertisers website landing page on a myriad of additional ‘undisclosed’ conversion metrics.

Traditionally the Quality Index was thought of as a simple formula based on the AdWords Campaign historical CTR and average CPC. This additional quality metric has been credited along with a few others as the main reasons why Google has been able to better monetize advertiser CPC prices vs. Overture/Yahoo! – and has from nowhere dominated in 4 short years the PPC marketplace.

Conclusion:
To properly run a smart and successful AdWords Campaign, be sure to pay attention to the following points:
-Research your competition
-Use proper Campaign/Adgroup taxonomy
-Always have relevant titles and descriptions
-Constantly look for new keyword/copy opportunities
-Optimize and Test, Optimize and Test

You never know when Google will add yet another facet to their Quality Index that could impact your existing AdWord account(s) profitability, the only guaranteed insurance is to run a well tested and relevant campaign.