Courtesy of the Google AdWords Help Center:

“Even if you have a high quality ad, if advertisers below you are not bidding very much, your actual CPC may not be high enough to qualify your ad to appear in a top position.

With this new formula, instead of considering your actual CPC, we’ll consider your maximum CPC bid, which you control. This means that your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you.“

This announcement indicates that Google remains keen to eliminate the long-tail approach to gaining cheap traffic, widely used by so-called (albeit misnamed) arbitrageurs in the SEM industry.

Until this change is implemented, advertisers can continue to place low quality ads in the top positions by bidding on keywords with little competition - generally lengthy, specific phrases.

Like most changes they make, this should be a win for Google and their users - higher prices for their ad inventory and / or better quality ads presented to the users.

I’m confronted with the purchase of a new laptop, and am wracked with indecision. A common problem, perhaps? It’s easy to see why: With such a bewildering array of options available I simply can’t be bothered – or don’t have sufficient information – to make the choice.

12, 14, 15, 17 inch screens. 2, 3 4kg weights, battery life options, processors, RAM, all the other specs that I’m not interested in studying. It’s all there. For me to decide.

Intel Core Duo T2250 vs Intel Core 2 Duo 5500? Even stating CPU clock speed has become passé. In the good old days we had MHz and GHz.

I don’t even particularly want to use a laptop, but upcoming travel engagements dictate it as a necessity.

We constrained Wormly users’ choices.

And it did a world of good. Until quite recently, Wormly customers were presented with pricing for every nuance of the services we offer, and they could use as much or as little as they liked.

It seemed a brilliant idea at the time, to offer no more and no less than what they needed (wanted?), and to make sure they don’t have to pay for stuff they can’t use.

Brilliant, except that it ignored a fundamental principle: That customers rarely know what they want.

All they know is that they have a problem - and it’s up to you to present the right solution. By splicing up our services into 4 distinct product offerings that appeal to 4 unique customer profiles, we’ve drastically simplified the buying process and – quite unsurprisingly – substantially improved our lead conversions.

Is it easy to buy your product?