Whenever an organization creates an advertisement it does with a prospect in mind and releases it to media, which in turn runs it so long as it is in line with their editorial policy and the payment keeps coming. Google does very much the same, but there is a difference, and that is Google cares that your advertisement is appealing and relevant to its users.
In the early days of search engines people figured out, to rank higher all that was needed was web pages stuffed with keywords. Search engines didn’t care whether the user got the relevant result he or she was looking for. However, people still considered search engines an improvement over yellow pages and lapped them up. And then came Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and they changed the way search engines operated. Their mantra was simple. They looked at researchers to know how they considered something worthy when doing research. Researchers and academics generally gave credence to those sources which are cited more than others. This was the principle used by both when they were developing Google. If a webpage with targeted keyword was been found useful and referenced more often then automatically that page jumped the queue and got ahead in rankings compared to other webpages with the same keyword. This is how Google gained reputation of returning the most relevant results.
What does this teach us?
Well, Google’s main objective is to give searchers the most relevant results. When AdWords was launched in 2002 they used the same principle in advertising that was being followed for content.
Google understands that today when people search they are as likely to click a paid search as they are to click a free listing (organic). As for paid search Google makes sure that the searcher gets a unique experience when the ad is clicked. And when a user is satisfied Google rewards such ads. Google measures an ad’s performance when the ad matches the search intent which is represented by the search query, and when the user gets a great experience after clicking on the ad. When these two points are satisfied Google pays attention to the auction that eventually determines placement of that ad.
Google realized they rose too fast and rose primarily because they were giving a unique experience to the users. So, in 2006 when they realized that five cent ads were not giving users unique experience they began charging $10 to advertisers till such time the quality of user experience improved.
From then on Google has been updating their search algorithm to refine search and provide Google user’s with the most relevant experience. Countless SEOs try to game Google with tactics and tricks without realizing that the easiest way to do this is by treating your prospects the way you would like to be treated. When you keep your prospects interests above everything else no algorithm change is going to affect you!