What will cause the Adwords Quality Score to drop

alxdean

alxdean

in the deep end
Apr 11, 2010
13
1
0
New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany and UK, dependin
This is a phenomenon I can't understand.
The first campaign I launched, I started with little understanding of the Quality Score. Thus, my landing page was not optimised properly for the keywords I was targetting. within 24h the quality score was halved and the minimum bid was doubled. So I increased the bid, only to see the minimum bid raised again within 8h. So I raised again, and the minimum was raised again to above 2$ within 8h. Then I gave up.

The next campaign I tried a direct linking approach. I knew the landing page was highly optimised for the keywords and I started off with a quality score of 5-7 for my prime keywords. within 24h the quality score was dropped to 2 and 3 respectively and the minimum bid was doubled from 70c to $1.5. I already know where this is going to go, so this time I won't waste money on higher bids.

I don't get it. how can the QS drop from 7 to 3 overnight? my CTR was between 0.7% and 0.9% for the good keywords. the others did not get any clicks, as the impressions were too low. When I look around I hear abot CTR of 0.3% being a good thing...

Please HELP! Someone please explain to me what I might be doing wrong!

Also, when I started I included the whole content network. But I was receiving hundreds of useless clicks of users, which were not even close to being serious about the click. Looking at the referrers I noticed quite a few spam portals, dodgy search enginges and spammy holding pages being the source of the useless clicks. So I filtered the content network to include only sites whch made sense. clicks from the network was decimated.

Have you noticed garbage clicks from the google content network? IS there anything good that can be done?

Any help greatly appreciated!!!
 


could be a lot of things...

the fact that you are direct linking or using a 1 page lander to offer is the main reason...

if the advertiser is advertising the product as well this is just duplicate content

you've been slapped
 
Dude, forget the one page lander, and try the minisite approach. Be strategic with your keyword placement, use the exact keywords from your ad groups, put them in the page title too. Add "legal disclaimer" ,"privacy policy", and a "contact us" page as well, and split test the shit out of your ads.
 
I don't want to piss on your fireworks and well done for having a go, but if you run the Content Network along with Search you may as well burn your money.

It's just one thing where Google knows you don't know what you're doing and will happily pick up your money.

Running both side by side is insanity. You want separate campaigns for each, you want different words, or words grouped in a completely different manner. You're best off with different ads... The list goes on. For the sake of your bank account i suggest you get some reading done. You MUST, MUST, MUST learn more about what you're doing.

Go to the Adwords Learning Centre and start reading through that. Don't buy any 'Guru' toss, because although the minority know a little about Adwords, most just want your money and don't really know what they're doing.

Get a book off Amazon if you must, the more recent the better. Read some blogs (people always recommend Da Cakes PPC guide) and use the learning centre to work your way towards certification, you'll save yourself an arm and a leg. :)
 
not enough info to tell you what happened.

run a minisite, use more related words on the copy and for sure separate all your shit with content/search and adgroups too.
 
Fuck google and their quality score. A clients site is a 100% legit business, 100 pages of content, our main keyword (read: their main business aspect, mentioned hundreds of times across the whole site) gets a quality score of 4! WTF!

Its like getting a low quality score for the keyword "brick laying melbourne" and the website is "www.bricklayersmelbourne.com.au", and the landing page is also about brick laying in melbourne.

Aged adwords account too.
 
Cheers folks. This has helped me a lot in confirming, that it is me. Which means I can improve and learn to play the system instead of being beat by the system. Nobody came up with a simple "oh that's what happens when" kind of answer, which confirms my fear of having sh1t loads of learning to do. So far I have been using up adwords vouchers and a couple of bucks here and there. got some great books already (Ca$hvertising and Landing Page Optimisation) and will dig into Cake's archives to look for the other nuggets.
I did notice how the content network was burning money, which is why I started being more specific. But I understand the necesity to keep search and CN on separate campaigns so I can optimise acordingly.

Ah well. There is no better solution than simply hard work I guess.

Thanks for taking the time to help out with this rookie question.

Alex
 
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alxdean said:
I don't get it. how can the QS drop from 7 to 3 overnight? my CTR was between 0.7% and 0.9% for the good keywords. the others did not get any clicks, as the impressions were too low. When I look around I hear abot CTR of 0.3% being a good thing...

Please HELP! Someone please explain to me what I might be doing wrong!
Click to expand...

Main reason that gets QS down is the low average CTR.
Use the three match formats (broad, phrase and exact) to see the best CTR and make A/B split tests.
 
PM me with your email and I will send you a pdf from a well respected Adwords guy that will give you the information you need.

And get off that content network until you know what u are doing. 2 Different animals all together Search and Content.

Are you saying your CTR is 7/10 of 1 percent or 7 percent ? If its the 7/10 than thats shitty and G will slap ya. You need to be 2 percent or better to get good CTR

Split test those ads and keep the ad groups tight.
 
The Adwords training materials are very thorough. Read them.
AdWords Help

Yeah, turn of Content (Display)

Also look at your CTR on Google versus Search partner. If your CTR on Search partner network is good but sucks on Google you will get low quality scores.
 
In my experience, landing pages have VERY little to do with QS. Even landing pages with your keyword on there 1,000 times can have a low CTR.

The biggest impact on QS is gonna be your ad. I know google and everyone says that it's based on your ads CTR, and that's def true, but from my testing on of the biggest factors is how many times the keywords for the ad group appear in your ad.

I have tested ad groups where ad A had higher CTR but mentioned my KW's less then the ad B, but the QS was 2 points higher for ad B b/c it had my KW in it 3 times. (i know this for a few reasons, 1. Google as showing ad B at an average position of 2.5 and ad A at 3.5. 2. i would pause ad A and the QS for my kw's would go up 2 points, then i would pause ad B and go back to A and QS would go back down)

Basically, work on your ads a lot. make really tight adgroups and test lots of ads and try and track which ads have a positive affect on your QS.

Also note that there are some niches that will always have a low CTR due to many factors. It's a mistake to think that it's possible to always get a QS of 7-10 in every niche. (heard this from a dedicated google rep)
 
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rgordon83 said:
In my experience, landing pages have VERY little to do with QS. Even landing pages with your keyword on there 1,000 times can have a low CTR.
Click to expand...

Pages with a keyword repeated 1,000 times cause G kicks your ass immediately. It's no sense to make even an assumption about this.
 
i've had google campaigns where the overall campaign clickthrough was close to 10% and certain groups and ads in the campaign at like 30% each and still gotten my qs shot to hell on a multiple page site so I'd image the content of the site can still screw ya.
 
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