So you may have noticed that in some of your AdWord’s ad groups a column appeared called “Quality Score.” In the quality score column you will see that each of your keywords gets ranked either poor, ok, or great (also a minimum bid is named.) A “poor” quality score can result in lower ad placement, a higher minimum bid, and/or a paused keyword. To see why your keyword is assessed the way it is you scroll over the little magnifying glass next to the keyphrase and you will see a page that tells you if your ad is showing or not and why your keyword is “poor” for instance. Upon first investigation this tool appears very helpful for improving your account but you may notice over time the same thing that I did.

The quality score explanation for “poor” ranked keywords is the same for every “poor” keyword. For a “poor” ranked keyphrase Google explains, “Based on the keyword’s relevance to the associated ad text, CTR, historical keyword usage, and other performance factors.” So I decided to take on each one of these possible reasons that Google provides and I came to the same conclusion, we are at Google’s mercy. Even though we are at their mercy I still found this to be a good exercise in optimizing an AdWords account.

First I made sure the ad copy included the keyword that had a poor quality score, then I made sure the landing page spoke to the keyword in question, then I made sure the bid was high enough for a 1-3 placement which in theory should ensure my CTR is pretty good. After I made all these changes I still didn’t see my quality score increase so my other options were to create another ad group specifically for this term or delete the term entirely. I created a new ad group for this term and still obtained a “poor” quality score. Since this was a new ad group with no impressions yet I figured Google couldn’t be using the CTR as the reason for the low quality score, I then deduced it must be “historical keyword usage, and other performance factors” whatever that means. So even though I wasn’t able to improve the quality score I figured out that this was part of the process I’ve been using for years as a Pay Per Click specialist. Even though I wasn’t able to get the results I was looking for, I realized Google is telling us a little bit of how they rank ads and bids which in turn can help you in creating effective AdWords’ campaigns and tweak existing ones. I still hope that someday Google will offer more transparency into the Quality Score.