Ad CTR and Quality Score

[bubbles]

I read somewhere that ads with a higher CTR are given a higher quality score, or maybe just shown more... I don't remember. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

I have a PPC campaign running right now. I put my max PPC at $0.25, this gets me a top position of about 4, depending on the keyword.

So far I've had 100,000+ impressions and 300 clicks, a CTR of about .3%.

When I first saw this I got really scared. What was wrong with my ad, did I need to rephrase it? What was wrong?

Then I did some thinking. If the highest position I'm ever going to get is 4, I can expect a bad CTR, regardless of how good my ad is, since higher placed ads will get a better CTR simply because the user sees them first.

For my purposes, I don't care about the CTR, I believe I wrote a good ad, and it delivers targeted visitors to my site. I'm paying per click, not per impression, so I don't care how many impressions it takes to get a targeted visitor.

I think it is unfair that the CTR gets factored into the QS, since all I really have to do is raise my max PPC price to get a better CTR.

Does this make any sense? Any thoughts/comments would be great.

 

[kaveman]

well first off its all about the big G makin money. They put ads that make them the most at the top. As far as some of the CTR/QS stuff:

Did you turn off the content network??
it not your fine, turn it off and it will jump insanley

Also your thought of lower possisions not getting read first is false. If your ad draws attention it will get seen and clicked. I know for a fact that you can get more clicks and a better CTR at lower postitions.

You say you dont care about CTR and that you wrote a good add, well i pose to you the question of why you don't consider CTR when writing your ad?

It's silly to say that factoring CTR into QS is bad. Quality score: if people are clicking the ad, its quality.

I understand your pain but its the way the system works and its deff for a reason. Try testing some ads written strictly with CTR in mind and see what happens.

 

[bubbles]

I have content network turned off already.

I'll give some more ads a try... We'll see what happens.

 

[arz]

For my purposes, I don't care about the CTR, I believe I wrote a good ad, and it delivers targeted visitors to my site. I'm paying per click, not per impression, so I don't care how many impressions it takes to get a targeted visitor.

You may not care, but Google does. Despite what you may feel, a CTR of 0.3% shows that the ad is not very useful to the people that see it and consequently it's not a positive user experience. That's why Google may slap you with a low quality score and high minimum bid, probably resulting in you suspending your campaign. And it makes sense for them to do so.

 

[bubbles]

Yeah I understand that whole google wanting to make money BS

I guess this post was more of just a CTR rant.

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