brizad - 9:43 pm on Mar 18, 2009 (gmt 0)

I see one page affiliate sites (PR 0) with not less than 20 affiliate links on that single page - they're doing just fine. They get QS of 7 just like that, even higher in some cases. They have no other but duplicated content from their parent partner, and they even copy ideas and layout from their affiliate competitors.

Take a look at the incoming links on that single page site and you'll probably see that there are some (or maybe you won't see them because google isn't showing them yet even though they know about them and are counting them). Quality incoming links to a one-page site can out do a site with lots of content with no incoming links. Good SEO of a site is counted as a part of the QS for adwords.

The PR 0 that you see is near meaningless. The PR shown in the toolbar is not the real PR that google uses to rank sites. Also the PR that you see in the toolbar is only updated quarterly or so while the real PR that google uses is nearly constantly updating as the the dynamics that go into QS change.

RE: domains
Sometimes a domain is just cursed and there's nothing you can do about it. I've had a domain get poor adwords QS no matter what was done. I've taken the exact same content, site, layout, structure, etc. and moved it to a new domain and had it instantly get great QS. I've had this happen twice with unrelated sites in unrelated verticals.

RE: getting a new AW account or keeping the old one
I've found that sometimes an account gets so badly off that it's not able to be revived. Even if it is able to be improved over time, why waste your time and money doing that? It doesn't make business sense to pay higher than you need to for some sort of personal goal of "saving" an account. Don't get emotionally attached to campaigns or accounts.

For $5 you get a new account and a clean slate. You copy the campaign over in adwords editor in 5 seconds and you're up and running again.

I was talking to a google rep last week and we were looking at a high-quality account I manage. Everything was fine there.

Then I asked him to check out something on another account that I manage, which has a less than stellar account history. I could hear the tone of his voice change and I asked him how to fix some issues and his exact response was "you might want to consider opening a new account." That's about as solid an answer you're going to get from google.

Here's a tip that might help some folks out. Use one or two accounts ONLY for new campaigns. Do all your testing there. Then when you've found out if the campaign is worth continuing, and most importantly, when you're sure that it's a high-quality campaign in google's eyes (good QS, high CRT, etc) only then copy over the high-quality stuff to an account that you keep for only high-quality campaigns. That way you never tarnish your "money" account with negative things.