Before the advent of Quality Score, the situation with Google advertising was as bad as it could be. Rich corporations and businessmen with big pockets slowly but surely were taking over the sponsored results. They set up huge Internet advertising budgets and were pushing small business with limited resources out of the game. In the early 2007 this situation had changed when Google announced the policy of Quality Score. This meant that most relevant Pay per click campaigns would rank highest in listings sponsored by Google.
Quality Score policy did tremendously improve the relevance of the sponsored ads. If any company wanted to build a successful PPC campaign it had to hire an experienced SEO contractor who would be capable of tuning up landing pages and working on keyword performance. He would also have to provide solid PPC campaign management, according to the new Internet trends.
Surprisingly, even now, when the year 2009 is swiftly approaching, many businesses still don’t follow Google guidelines and Quality Score policy. They think that by not hiring an SEO professional they save money. But quite the opposite happens. They keep bidding on keywords that are nowhere to be found on landing pages. In turn, Google, in absence of other words, fines them by raising sky high the minimum of CPC. The minimum can keep on on going up to the extent, that makes any profitability impossible.
Personally, I like Google approach with Quality Score. It moved organic results and ppc sponsored results closer to each other. If you are a web analyst or an SEO consultant, you know that there will be no organic results if you try to sell shoes on the web page that has content about oranges.