The Vicious Cycle of Quality Score in Google AdWords
Posted in Search MarketingGetting onto the first page of Google for organic search results is usually going to be quite a challenge. That’s where Google AdWords comes in – and it’s the easy way to get that ranking.
However, these days are coming to an end and it seems that ranking on paid search results is becoming more and more of a challenge. Especially with a quality score to filter out the terrible ads that don’t actually add value for users.
I recently have been working on a campaign for a client – targeting highly competitive terms. I did all I could on the campaign in terms of optimisation and bid a huge amount on the keywords. The result? The ad showing up a tiny portion of when it should, driving 2 clicks a day, a huge cost per click and a ‘Poor’ quality score.
So I discussed with issue with a Google Optimiser – and they essentially said there was no solution but to wait for improvement. But in doing so they gave me a good description of the way quality score was working in this case.
Here’s a summary of the impact of quality score in this situation
- When you don’t have enough data for your own quality score – you get the average of other advertisers for that specific keyword. In my case, there are a ton of dodgy advertisers which will not be relevant for users so overall have a poor quality score.
- When there’s lots of competition, you absolutely need a good quality score to get displayed. My ads were put in the place of a bad ad and therefore not showing up.
- The only way to improve quality score is to prove that your ad is of quality to Google. You can only do this by showing valuable clicks and beat the average performance for that keyword by other advertisers.
This basically means I’m stuck in a rut, as I’m sure many other advertisers are who actually are selling a good quality product. No solution yet either.