With the recent changes Google has made to its pay-per-click algorithm -- intended to thwart the misuse of landing pages with little or no real content -- apparently these changes have caused many Google advertising partners to throw their collective hands up in complete disgust. The changes apparently have unintended effects -- or shall I say, effects that were not at all communicated to some of Google's largest ad vendors -- who are now seeing bid prices for Google pay-per-click keywords skyrocket in price. Ouch.

This blog post indicates that Google can't really judge what is a poor-quality landing page and what is a good-quality landing page. The author here rides Google pretty hard on the judging of "Quality" that Google stipulates in the official Google AdWords policy -- and to a point, I have to agree: how does Google judge quality? If this is performed automatically by machines and algorithms, oh boy. Is AI really all that advanced with recognizing the subtle nuances of how quality is perceived by the human brain?

Google advertisers over at the ClickBankSuccessForum are screaming for blood as well. With the new Google landing page policy, it appears that the "quality" of some previously high-quality keywords and products on certain content pages are no longer being deemed as high-quality by the recent Google change -- and in effect, many products are falling off the Google radar. Lost sales hits home in the hardest way, so these Google ad partners have quite a few legit beefs here. So, this is a test -- will Google listen to customer complaints well and try to resolve the situation as amicably and nicely as possible? Some of the street cred of Google is at stake, so let's hope so.

As this story develops, I'll post updates. This is apparently causing a major uproar as of today and I'm sure it'll get messier.

[Note: Thanks to Chris G. for the many pointers and resources provided!]