Unmasking the Abomination of Quality Score

Posted onApril 24th, 2010 byadmin

Dear Quality Score Victim,

I have to admit: I’ve been dying to write an updated piece about Quality Score (QS) since 2 years ago when we put out THIS BLOG piece. The game has changed forever and I’ve spent more time gritting my teeth and cursing at my monitor (logged into Adwords) than ever before. The reason is because we were told quality score was to help ‘reward’ advertisers for constructing highly relevant campaigns and adgroups. But its all different now. Where’s the reward?

When QS was first introduced to advertisers in 2005, it was just a static score used to determine the minimum CPC based on the ad relevancy to its keywords. Over the next five years, Google would add in: CTR, landing page relevancy, account history (a combine average of all CTR’s in an account, and (the best part) “other relevant factors.” I’ve always gotten a big laugh out of “other relevant factors” because as I would dissect QS, I could see there was much more unexplained reasoning for low quality scores.

An Illustration of Traditional Quality Score (Pre-2009-2010)

In August of 2008, Google restructured QS and made it a “real-time” score that would take effect as soon as someone searched on Google. Some of the other differences Google made were: replacment of minimum CPC  to “first page minimum bid”, landing page quality, and landing page load time. In expectation of a rough change to quality scores, we were surprised that existing advertisers who had been advertising a while, didn’t really see much change…until 2010. Now we go into the accounts and look around at QS but we’re not in Kansas no mo.

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Directing Buyers and Testing Ads (3/4 and 4/4)

Posted onJuly 31st, 2009 byadministrator

Directing Buyers (Part 3/4)

Directing buyers is one of the easiest things to do when writing ads because you only have so many choices of where to direct them to. When you edit ads, you have your option for destination URL. This is where you will direct your visitors once they click on the ads.

Where you direct them is for the most part, a no-brainer. Most advertisers choose to point them to the landing that has the most relevant information for their buyer. However you might run into a traffic snag here or there if you don’t mind a few things. Just as you review Bounce Rates in the Analytics settings; it is good to contemplate your landing pages if you are seeing higher percentages.

Higher bounce rate percentages doesn’t necessarily mean you have unqualified buyers or have chosen an ineffective landing page. I often find high bounce rates in adgroups where the keywords are very product specific (brands and model types) usually because they point to a very product specific landing pages. This is because all the information they are looking for surrounding that keyword and inquiry is clearly on that product landing page. They get the information they want and they leave without any need to navigate the site any further.

This is inherently dangerous. If they leave your website and they haven’t purchased anything, it might be because they received their information and realized they didn’t want that product after all. So when you see high bounce rates and low sales, you might consider changing the destination URL to something with more options. This could be a product group or category page. This way they see more options and are more likely to buy because of it. You should not always assume because you have an extensive navigation feature that visitors will always use it. Believe it or not, sometimes they don’t even recognize it as an option. You should try putting options in front of them so they are forced to pick one.

This isn’t always the right answer so testing landing pages is always a good idea. In Analytics, go to Traffic Sources> Ad Versions, you will be able to look your ads bounce rates. Remember high bounce rates can be caused by many things; some of which have nothing to do with the ad itself. So look for patterns such as the one I mentioned to decide your best course of action. If it is indeed an outside issue, it will become more apparent when you test your ads’ landing pages this way.

Testing Ad Variations (Part 4/4)

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Qualifying (Part 2/4) Writing Effective Adwords Ads

Posted onJuly 31st, 2009 byadministrator

Qualifying Buyers (Part 2/4)

The second purpose in writing effective ads is to qualify buyers. There are two reasons why you want to qualify your buyers, 1) to make sure they are actually buyers and 2) to make sure they want something you have. Some of the actions you will take in this part may already be done by virtue of taking action to attract your buyers. Nevertheless, it is important that you make a mental note that you have qualified your visitors as your buyers before letting the ads run.

Make sure they are buyers and not just information hungry visitors. (Writing catchy ads can be very similar in task.) As an advertiser, it seems common knowledge that the sponsored links area of a search results page will hold only ads whose sponsor is looking to sell something. In other words, people searching, who are not advertisers, may not know the sponsored links are there for more than information usually. How can we make sure that people clicking on our ads are really out to buy something?

We have already done this if we inserted some “call-to-action” language or description that implies a purchase. In the example ad, there were 4 things that do this; all of which were in the description.

20% Off All Whole Bean Purchases.
Free Fast Shipping, Order Online!

20% Off means off of a price which implies a purchase. The actual word ‘Purchases’ is more littoral than implied. In case you were wondering, it states, “You will be making a purchase.” Shipping information implies purchasing or buying. And the best way to imply a necessity to buy (especially when you have more product description in the ad) is to put in a call-to-action; Order Online, Order Now, Buy Now, etc. Don’t use “click here.” Google does not allow this call-to-action and it doesn’t imply the necessity to buy.

Make sure they are looking for something you can offer.

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3 Purposes to Mind when Writing Effective Adwords Ads

Posted onJuly 28th, 2009 byadministrator

When writing effective ads, it’s a keen idea to bear 3 purposes in mind; attracting, qualifying and directing buyers. Most advertisers spend a lot of time concentrating on what would entice a visitor to click on the ad (attraction) paying little or no attention to making sure they are buyers and not just visitors (qualification). Most advertisers will point buyers (direction) to relevant landing pages. However, they might misjudge which the most effective landing pages are. All the purposes of attracting, qualifying, and directing buyers will hold sub-purposes which we will soon formulate into goals. These goals should not only be considered, but closely adhered to when writing ads for your Adwords campaigns.

This is a 4-part series so stay tuned over the next 4 days to get the whole lesson.

Attracting Buyers (Part 1/4)

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Lower CPCs by Creating High Keyword Quality Scores

Posted onApril 30th, 2008 byadministrator

Quality Scores determine the lowest actual CPC (cost per click) that you can pay at any given time for a keyword. It also helps determine how high your ads get ranked on Google. Don’t you think it’s important to understand this concept if your goals are focused on lowering CPC?A Quality Score by Google’s definition is “Quality Score is 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.”In a nutshell, your keywords Quality score helps determine how high your ad gets ranked and also the lowest dollar amount you pay for a click-thru onto your site. These two things are a few of the most important factors surrounding advertiser success on the search engines. It’s probably responsible for the most downfalls because this concept encompasses so many other areas of the campaign.According to Google Adwords help file, here’s how Quality scores are derived:For calculating a keyword’s minimum bid:

• The keyword’s historical click through rate (CTR) on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered.
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group.
• The quality of your landing page.
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
• Other relevance factors

For calculating a keyword-targeted ad’s position on a search result page:

• The historical CTR of the ad and of the matched keyword on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered.
• The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query.
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
• Other relevance factors

Notice in calculating the QS for minimum bid, the keyword relevancy to landing pages are the third factor. This factor along with keyword relevancy to ad text and account CTR (click through ratio) are the only factors that are shown that we really have any control over. The historical CTR of the keyword on Google can only be controlled by its participation in the campaign all together. So now you are left with:

1. The keyword’s relevancy to the ad text.
2. The keyword’s relevancy to the landing page on your website.
3. The overall CTR of keywords and ads in your whole account.

These are the only three things that we can really do something about today that will help you lower costs tomorrow. Here is what we recommend to start:

1. Group or segment similar keywords in to AdGroups. By sticking them into separate AdGroups with similar ad text, it increases the relevancy between the search query and the ads. Make sure not to stick in an over-abundance of keywords into each unless the majority of them generate substantial CTRs. Having too many underperforming keywords plaque the AdGroup and to some extent, the whole account. I haven’t personally found too much documentation on this phenomenon. However from my own eyes; I’ve seen campaigns suffer because they tossed in a whole lot of non-performing keywords. This inevitably tossed the CTR on the whole account and plagued ad ranking from that day forward. Once the algorithm flagged it, the damage was irreparable and the account had to be recreated from scratch. Stick to only relevant and performing keywords. Keep this criterion close and you can’t go wrong.
2. Play “king of the hill” with ad variations. Advertisers often overlook the quality of their ad text copy because they don’t properly weigh its potential to attract or not attract customers. When you write ad copy, you want to make sure that we are attracting buyers, qualifying buyers, and relating the search query. Segmenting keywords into specialized AdGroups helps to relate the ads to keywords. So you always want to try and include some of the common words from the keyphrases in the actual ad text copy. Secondly, you have to get those CTRs up. By writing compelling ads that attract buyers and qualify them for your products or services, you can get more relevant traffic clicking through to your site and increase your CTR at the same time. Have 2 ad variations running at the same time. If you set the ads to be equally visible, in the ad settings, you can quickly gage after you’ve had some traffic; which one is the better performing ad. This tells you that it’s attracting your customers more often and the underperforming ad should be deleted and a new one should be created. Play “king of the hill” with your ads for as long as it takes you to decide you don’t know how to write more effective ads. And even then try doing it from time to time. Maintaining high CTRs equals maintaining higher quality scores. And that equals better positioning for lower costs.
3. Lastly, point your ads to the most relevant landing page on your website. This will both increase your quality score and make your customers more likely to buy from you. You will know your landing page is the most relevant to your AdGroup when it contains the most readable content about the keywords in that group. Save your site viewers time in having to search for information. Make it readily available to them and they will reward you for it. 

This is the first “real” blog posting to the RSP website. We really wanted to come in with a bang. We know giving you this much information can be very overwhelming, especially if you’re not sure what to do with it. The purpose of this blog is to create awareness and promote search engine adverting in general. The advice is free but we must disclaim, we only offer it as a professional opinion and not fact. The references taken from Google in this posting are directly from the Google Adwords Help file available online. You get see them here: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215 RealSearch Pros certainly looks forward to your feedback and welcome any questions you might have about Google Adwords, Analytics, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or MSN Adcenter.