From your reply, I understand that your primary issue is indeed with scaling any manner of support issues. As I understand it, the current thinking at Google is to seek automated solutions over technical to reduce costs and improve issue volume handling. With that in mind, is there a system of triggers that can flag issues for manual review or intervention instead of being handled completely automatically?
I think the majority of issues that have people up in arms aren't really that big, but there are the exceptions. Instead of monitoring G+/Twitter/etc., there could instead be a series of internal checks that look for particular criteria:
1. Age of campaign/ad - was it super old and not really applicable or not even running much budget? It may be worth a lighter hand than a complete ban because it isn't indicative of a trend or pattern on the part of the advertiser.
2. Amount of impressions/clicks/spend over time - what is the overall severity based on actual impact? Are users actively clicking on the ad, returning to the site and continuing to use it? As each click and therefore organic link is logged, it would be good to cross reference them and go "well, this site raises flags but has high return-user rates and decent sentiment in organic results"
3. Traffic vs. Content ratio - does the site have fairly thin content that still gets dramatic numbers of users? Tying in with #2, it basically can help tell if a site is offering something thin on content but highly unique and/or valuable. If people are using it, they may be on to something that the QS algorithm misses.
The one thing I'd love to see is just a little bit more of a verbose notification or warning for the people that get hit. While many only have themselves to blame, many want to make sure they stay on the right side and any chance they have to do so is of great benefit. Then again, it is also important to not give to much information to the black-hatters that just make use of it to get even better at gaming the system.
These are just thoughts, but it has long been on my mind considering the metric ass-ton I've run through AdWords for myself and clients over the years. Hope this helps spark a few ideas :)
"With that in mind, is there a system of triggers that can flag issues for manual review or intervention instead of being handled completely automatically?"
I can't speak for the ads folks at all, unfortunately, but on the websearch side we certainly strive to do as much as we can algorithmically, but also to use our manual cycles effectively. The site in question was flagged algorithmically, but also sent to a member of the manual webspam team who concluded that it violated our quality guidelines. When a reconsideration request came in, it went back to a manual person for review again.
To the extent we can figure out ways to do it without compromising our systems, I think both websearch and ads would like to be as transparent as we can.
From your reply, I understand that your primary issue is indeed with scaling any manner of support issues. As I understand it, the current thinking at Google is to seek automated solutions over technical to reduce costs and improve issue volume handling. With that in mind, is there a system of triggers that can flag issues for manual review or intervention instead of being handled completely automatically?
I think the majority of issues that have people up in arms aren't really that big, but there are the exceptions. Instead of monitoring G+/Twitter/etc., there could instead be a series of internal checks that look for particular criteria:
1. Age of campaign/ad - was it super old and not really applicable or not even running much budget? It may be worth a lighter hand than a complete ban because it isn't indicative of a trend or pattern on the part of the advertiser.
2. Amount of impressions/clicks/spend over time - what is the overall severity based on actual impact? Are users actively clicking on the ad, returning to the site and continuing to use it? As each click and therefore organic link is logged, it would be good to cross reference them and go "well, this site raises flags but has high return-user rates and decent sentiment in organic results"
3. Traffic vs. Content ratio - does the site have fairly thin content that still gets dramatic numbers of users? Tying in with #2, it basically can help tell if a site is offering something thin on content but highly unique and/or valuable. If people are using it, they may be on to something that the QS algorithm misses.
The one thing I'd love to see is just a little bit more of a verbose notification or warning for the people that get hit. While many only have themselves to blame, many want to make sure they stay on the right side and any chance they have to do so is of great benefit. Then again, it is also important to not give to much information to the black-hatters that just make use of it to get even better at gaming the system.
These are just thoughts, but it has long been on my mind considering the metric ass-ton I've run through AdWords for myself and clients over the years. Hope this helps spark a few ideas :)