When I say "Quality Score", what’s your first reaction?
Quality Score may still be something of an enigma. If you’re already Quality Score savvy, you may consider it the arrival of a long lost friend. Or maybe it’s one you wished had stayed lost?
Whatever your current knowledge (and opinion) is, we’re going to put Quality Score under the microscope and dissect its parts.
A common misconception is that there is only one type of Quality Score, when in fact there are many:
Account Quality Score
Content Campaign Quality Score
Search Campaign Quality Score
Landing Page Quality Score
Ad Group Quality Score
Ad Text Quality Score
Keyword Quality Score
In this series, we’ll focus on Keyword Quality Score (this is the only one you can view inside your google account).
Quality Score is one of your best competitive advantages, if you know how to work with it. It's also one of the cheapest optimization methods since it doesn't require additional spend. There are not many methods of dramatically improving your PPC campaigns without throwing more money at them. So read on!
What is Quality Score?
Google gives an all-encompassing definition of Quality Score as “a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. The higher a keyword's Quality Score, the lower its minimum bid and the better its ad position.”
Basically it’s a rating of how good a keyword is, based on a few criteria.
What’s Quality Score Used For?
With relevancy being Google’s middle name, it’s no surprise that Quality Score is designed to provide end-users with a better experience by displaying more relevant search results.
For a user, Quality Score is another way of making sure relevant and topical ads are shown.
As an advertiser, Quality Score is used to determine three things:
Your minimum CPC bid
Keyword status/whether your ad runs or not
Your ad’s ranking position
I’m sure you’ll agree these three are pretty important to your campaigns!
Why you should take the time to learn about Quality Score
Is Quality Score something you need to concern yourself with? Consider this; a low Quality Score means higher bid costs, fewer ad impressions and lower rankings when the ad is shown. It’s hard to put a positive spin on any of that!
A higher Quality Score lowers your bid costs and raises your ad position. Conversions, and more importantly ROI, are both improved by a high Quality Score.
The example below illustrates how Quality Score can impact your minimum bid cost and ad position, rather than the bid cost determining everything else.
How Quality Score can affect bid cost and ad rank
It’s a competitive and crowded market place out there, so no matter what business you’re in, any advantage is good right? Right.
In introducing Quality Score, Google leveled the playing field somewhat. Ad position is no longer about how much money you can throw at a campaign. Smarter, better campaigns are rewarded allowing SMEs to compete in the same space with some of the "big boys". Sound good? It should!
Where do I find my Quality Score?
Simply log-in to your Google Adwords account, then view your keyword lists. Click on the link to Customize Columns. In the "show/hide" columns drop-down, select "Show Quality Score" and a new column will be added after keywords showing a score of Great, OK, or Poor.
Click the Customize columns link in your Keywords tab Select "show/hide" columns, then Show Quality Score Quality Scores are then displayed for every keyword
How is Quality Score calculated?
Keyword Quality Score is based on relevancy and performance. It has many contributing factors and is a dynamic variable dependent on other dynamic variables including:
Click through rate on Google (excluding Content Network)
Relevancy of keywords and ad creative
Landing page and web site quality and relevancy*
The Account’s Historical performance (based on CTR across all keywords and ads)
Other Relevancy Factors
* Quality Score for keyword minimum CPC differs from the Quality Score used to determine ad ranking. Most factors are the same, however Landing Page Quality is not used in ad ranking Quality Score.
Factors contributing to Quality Score
We can only theorize on the other relevancy factors - IP targeting, geo-targeting, demographic targeting, ad scheduling etc. A Google Engineer was once quoted “There are over 100 factors that can affect Quality Score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved”.
Over the next 4 posts we’ll be delving deeper into Quality Score, focusing on the ingredients 1-4, which we have more control over.
So make sure you check back for our series of posts on:
Raise Your Click Through Rates for Better Quality Score
Keyword & Ad Relevancy – How They Boost Your Quality Score
Achieve Higher Quality Score with Better Landing Page Quality
Indirect Quality Score Influences – Do You Know Them?
If you haven’t already taken the time to get to know your Quality Scores, log-in to your account now and display your Quality Score column. Are yours Poor, OK or Great?
Great Quality Score is your key to more effective campaigns with lower bid costs.
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Reena
Shohet is a PPC marketing specialist and the Product Manager for
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Article Series
This article is part 1 of a 5 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
That was a nice intro to the Quality Score. You have quoted that there are 100 factors involved in deciding the quality Score. Do you know all the factors involved in it? If yes, what would their hierarchy. I am pretty amazed to hear that there are 100 factors in deciding the QS. And regarding the article, for a beginner this article is surely a eye opener.
