Quality Score identifies the overall effectiveness of an AdWords campaign from click to conversion. It goes beyond click through rate fluctuations to provide insight into as copy quality, keyword choice, and landing page performance. The purpose of Quality Score is to help determine the overall satisfaction of the end-to-end advertising experience for users. Having a high Quality Score means that Google’s systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. Having a low Quality Score means that your ads, keywords, and landing page probably aren’t as relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.
Quality Score has been confusion for advertisers, but now Google has implemented a feature in AdWords that givers users the ability to save time identifying problems with their keyword quality score regarding their pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. In Google AdWords, a dialog box now appears with three new quality score indicators when a user hovers over the keywords status bar. The new quality score indicators include: Ad Relevance, Expected Click through Rate (CTR), and Landing Page Experience. These indicators are rated as Below Average, Average and Above Average. The result is there is now more transparency from Google.
The new indicators and ratings will help users identify and correct issues much more easily which assists them in focusing more on their actions to make the necessary improvements. Quality Score cumulates all the data points into one single ‘out of ten’ rating based on the three key ad experience factors into account over time. Quality Score previously lacked any insight into what issues were specifically driving quality score down, but now this most recent improvement will help advertisers focus on specific parts of the calculation and make their campaign auditing efforts more effective.
A black box for ad pricing allows Google to have a permanent data-centric dialog with advertisers on how they can improve their campaigns and create a better experience for their target users. Quality Score helps to maintain the integrity of each single keyword level auction and act as a go-between for the interests of Google, Advertisers, and Users. The idea is to get advertisers to concentrate their efforts on delivering a better user experience which should translate into more profitable campaigns.
New factors to consider for AdWords campaign management:
1. Expected click through rates are stabilized against ad position. This means bidding to a high position will not make a material difference to this metric and therefore will not improve your Quality Score. This is because it is a keyword targeting metric. For instance, a below average rating could indicate you are not bidding on the right keyword or you are not correctly predicting what users are searching for in their search.
2. Ad Relevance is distinct from Expected CTR. This is due to it comparing your ad with your competitors for the keyword. On this metric, a below average rating may indicate that you should test your ad copy and scrutinize how your competitor’s messaging may be answering the user’s needs better than your ad.
3. Landing Page Experience reveals if searchers are actually locating what they are looking for on your pages. To improve this metric, create destination URLs for individual keywords and try to remove any apparent hindrances during the user purchase process. It is essential to be clear. For instance, do you indicate that you are offering free shipping in your ads, but not displaying that offer on the landing page? The new indicators allow these metrics to compare the market on a keyword and provide you with some insight into what is occurring on at a macro level.
Google will recalculate your Quality Score every time your ads are eligible for the ad auction, which can potentially happen many times a day. Rather than showing you different Quality Scores throughout the day, Google shows you a single Quality Score that gives you an estimate of that keyword’s overall quality.
Higher Quality Scores normally lead to lower costs and better ad positions. The AdWords system works best when the ads Google shows are relevant and closely matching what customers are looking for. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.
