We couldn’t agree more with your assessments. Talk to any credit card company about what would happen if you are using your client’s card, and if the card had any fraudulent usage. What I’ve been told is that basically if the client is violating their credit card agreement with their bank by letting a third party use their card, they are no longer covered by Visa insurance and can be completely liable for any fraudulent usage.

Also you’re not supposed to store any client’s personal code for any reason. If it were stolen from your possession, your own company could become liable for the fraudulent usage, as well as assessed heavy penalties by Visa and/or American Express because your violated your own merchant agreement with them by storing the client’s personal code (cvv).

Q-score means quality score, which is a search engine’s algorithmic evaluation of the “relevance” of your of your PPC buy. Factors include ad copy, landing page optimization for the keyword, and history-including click through percentage (CTR).

The Q-score can affect the cost and even ability to bid your ad higher in the paid SERPs (search engine results page) for a keyword. A long history of click throughs, which make the engines money, is a valuable thing because it can actually keep the cost more reasonable.

This is a very interesting article for someone to read who knows very little about SEM. I find it fascinating that in the course of your blog you seem to be giving away “secrets” about how to run a successful SEM business. Are other SEM businesses as transparent as AimClear? What have you gained from sharing as much about your business as you do via your blog? Can you write another post and explain what a Qscore is?

Thanks!

Also, I know Google can tie account history together too. So if an account is not turned over, they can tie old account history with the new on their end.