The New AAA Club: Angry AdWords Advertisers

In May 2005, a criticism from the new AAA club, many of whom accused Google of inventing algorithm shifts as an excuse to drive up CPCs around the holidays. The argument went that Google announced the landing page quality score to scare off click arbitrageurs, then banished well-performing ads with a low CPC to the bottom of the SERP. These advertisers would therefore need to bid more on their ads, especially around the holidays, which would drive Google's revenues through the roof. Since Google doesn't disclose any details about its algorithm shifts (for fear of allowing search spammers to game the system), they open themselves up for this kind of criticism. They claim that they're working to benefit searchers and reward advertisers for doing things right, and that may very well be true. But without disclosing specifics of what they're doing-without, in other words, good customer service-how can anyone be sure? Other conspiracy theorists feel that regardless of a promise to difficulties of one business owner who felt that he was owed over $100K in fraudulent clicks from Google and Yahoo. After many emails, some of which garnered anonymous responses from Google, he got back $35K. More recently, a CNet article allows many Did-it Search Marketing team which accompanies him to most major marketing conferences.