Google Adwords Rumor Confirmed

There has been a lot of speculation in various forums about the recent rumor that Google changed their algorithm that is responsible for the Quality Score and its affect on the PPC ads. The speculation has been that the landing page quality can effect the bid price for certain words and even get the keywords changed to an 'inactive' state. Well, I've gotten confirmation that the rumor is true and here is what Google had to say about it.

Your question about the rumor regarding your landing page being a factor in the overall Quality Score is true. Making sure that the landing page is relevant to your ad, and that it is easily navigable, helps to create a better user experience. For your convenience, I have enclosed a link with details about this for you: AdWords Site Guidelines

The goal is obviously to create a better user experience, more relevant ads help the user, advertiser and Google's stock price but some people believe that Google has crossed a boundary with this change and is doing it to milk advertisers. There is still an ongoing debate about how the changes are affecting accounts and what can be done to help counteract its affects. Even though some Adwords users have seen a positive change and some have seen an extremely negative change, I believe this is just another advocation for having your PPC campaign managed by a professional, who should be on top of changes like these in the future.