AdWords and Quality Score

In 2006-2007, Google made some adjustments to the way the relevancy of your site was determined for the purpose of pricing your minimum keyword bids.

We all know Google is emphatic about search results being natural – which is why they implemented PageRank (which most people view as flawed, but that’s another topic for another day.) The Quality Score is how they attempt to maintain organic results on AdWords.

Google designated ad campaign keywords as ‘Poor’, ‘OK’, or ‘Great’ so people could get a visual idea of the Quality Score. The price you pay for your keywords is based off of this score, which is why it is so important to consider all of the different factors that go into calculating it.

The text in your ads is a factor, as it is expected to give users a good idea of what to expect if they click on your ad. Google wants user experience to be the best it can be, so don‘t trick consumers into clicking on your ad with false hope. Why would you want to do that, anyway? You get charged by the click, and it‘s unlikely that your visitor will stick around once they discover you are selling something completely different than what you want.

You landing page quality and load time are also major factors. Spiders crawl landing pages at least once a month – perhaps more often. They don’t want to see any white text on white background, too much flash, or keyword stuffed content with no value.

Your past ad performance history is also looked at. If you have had high conversion rates in the past, you probably are doing something right. This can make it easier for you to obtain favorable minimum bids and to keep costs down as your ROI is greater. Bounce rates, or how fast the user returns to search results after clicking an ad, can also be affecting your Quality Score.

Made For AdSense sites were popular for a while, but the lowered the Google rating for user experience and Google took steps to shut them down. Quality Score was a major part of this attack, and was mostly  successful.

All Google really demands is that it’s advertisers follow the code of ‘Don’t be evil’. Give the users what they really want, fast, Google says, and that is what matters the most.