Adwords quality score is bull?

[DavidLenehan]

Is it me or is Google Adwords quality score a load of bull. I use part numbers as my keywords and have virtually the same landing page for each one. The only difference is the order of the paragraphs in my descriptions, the product attributes and the SKU. so why does one part get an 7 and the other a 5? Surely they should be the same?

[jdossetti]

Hi David,

I've asked myself that question so many times. Whatever I seem to do, the quality score just seems to be random. Google has this relatively new page explaining the quality score. Check it out, they've included more factors than before. http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2454010.

I called them last week to get a clearer idea of what could be causing a low quality score, and the support person told me (from what I understood) that the keyword itself might be causing the low score, independently of how you use it (whether you have good ad copy, landing page, etc.) Some keywords are just more specific and relevant than others and have a higher click through rate across all advertisers' accounts, not just your click through rate. So in your case, maybe one part number is more popular, and has a higher click through rate with you and all other advertisers than the others. That could possibly be the reason.

I hope this helps

[stevefidelity]

It's definitely not the easiest thing to wrap your head around, and I'm sure anyone who has ever managed a PPC campaign has thought the same thing.

When I first saw Hal Varian's video on Quality Score  that gave me a better understanding.

He breaks down quality score as follows:

60% is related to CTR

30% is related to 'Relevance'

10% is landing page

The way that I've seen a lot of people talk about Quality Score & AdWords suggests that they think the landing page is a much more important part of the equation.

In my opinion, the best thing the focus on is CTR. If your clients' ads are getting clicked on more often, you're helping Google make more money. If the ads getting clicked on more often because it's more relevant to the user's search query, Google has a strong monetary incentive to serve that ad up higher. That's all very logical. Try not to get caught up in the minutiae of Quality Score. When you don't know exactly what their formula is, it can definitely get confusing/frustrating.

[David_ODonnell]

As suggested by the previous responses, click-through rate is the #1 factor in quality score. You may notice when you first add a new keyword it is assigned a certain quality score which may change quite quickly based on the CTR the keyword is achieving.

You can also see how Adwords rates each keyword for the 3 main factors, expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience by clicking on the little speech bubble next to each keyword in the Status column.

[DavidLenehan]

Hi

I watched the video and it made some sense however both of my keywords have a similar CTR and I use dynamic keyword insertion to make my ads more relevant. Just seems a bit hit and miss to me.

Thanks for the advice anyway.