In other words... can high CTR push down the "initial" MinBid which was largely based on the landing page quality?
For example your landing really sucks and you got $5 Min Bid. If your ad comes out and busts an 70% CTR.. will that slam down the Min Bid or it will stay at $5?
which is largely based on the quality of your landing page.
Where did you get that one from? If you start off with the wrong information, you end up asking the wrong questions.
(hint) Carefully read google's documentation on QS)
I can never understand why some think that because the ad is good it follows that the site must be.
"click here for free money" would get a lot of clicks - but if there was no free money the other side ...
pengo: there's no such a thing as "landing page QS". There's "landing page quality" and CTR and some other things which together form the QS for a particular ad. So of course, increase in CTR can increase your QS. My question was... can high CTR counteract the effects of low "landing page quality"?
Where do you obtain this information from?
I am extremely sceptical of suggestions that the CTR for an Ad is associated with the QS applicable to the keywords for that Ad. I can believe that CTR [u]from[/u] the landing page has something to do with it though.
As regards whether the Quality Score belongs to the Ad or the landing page - I think we were both wrong to some extent.
The Quality Score seems to be a property of the keyword AND the Target Site combination. [Try changing the target landing page and Ad Text for a keyword that has been hit by the QS and you'll find this has no effect on reducing the minimum bid.]
Where the Ad CTR may come into play is during the initial period when (as I understand it) more page impressions are still needed to provide G with sufficient data to set the "correct" minimum bid for the keyword.
[edited by: Pengi at 2:17 pm (utc) on Dec. 2, 2006]
No, it takes a while for the QS to be assigned. Google seems to do a QS update apx. every 2 months ( since they started) and then the Bid Prices on adWords go haywire. They may in the future do this faster :-(
If this was not true, you could not change your Domain and restart again ( which many people do and is the quickest way to restart adWords) ..... waiting for the QS to hit ...again.
I am extremely sceptical of suggestions that the CTR for an Ad is associated with the QS applicable to the keywords for that Ad.
I think it's "possible" that ad ctr enters into it. Since google replace ctr in it's "display formula" (CTR X bid), it would somewhat surprise me if they eliminated it completely. My guess would be that they folded it into the QS formula along with the other 100 or so variables they've indicated may be involved in that formula.
Who knows.
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More of the same...
[adwords.google.com...]
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"The Quality Score
Some factors have continued to appear every time we evaluate the most relevant ads and keywords within AdWords. These factors include performance variables like keyword clickthrough rate (CTR), ad text relevance, overall historical keyword performance with Google, and even the user experience on the landing page or site associated with an ad. We put all of these factors and more together to create a Quality Score - the measurement of an ad's quality in relation to each of your keywords.
Your keyword's Quality Score is not set in stone and can increase or decrease based on changes, good or bad, to the quality of your ad, keyword, or landing page. This score can also change due to strong performance in AdWords - a high clickthrough rate, for example, can help to increase your overall Quality Score."
[adwords.google.com...]
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So, yes.
OK, I'll try again. Work with me:)
Quality Score = (keyword's CTR, ad text relevance, keyword relevance, landing page relevance) <- that is official, don't argue about this plz.
QS determines the Min Bid. <- also official - dont argue.
Now again to my original question:
If the landing page relevance really sucked and produced an initial low QS and a high Min. Bid. - is it possible that if the ad produces a high CTR in the actual running.. that the Min Bid will be reduced?
OK, this was my last try :)
Sorry, but I do believe that Google state somewhere - "and a number of other factors" as well as the bits you mentioned.
It is my understanding that even if you create a great CTR - if the landing page sucks, you will not get your min bid price reduced. I guess, fundamentally, Google is trying to rid the sysstem of MFA sites. Therefore, no matter how good the CTR - if the QS on the landing page is bad, I would not expect any decrease in minimum bids. This, I believe, has been reported elsewhere in WebmasterWorld. Therefore I would conclude that the "weight" of the landing page outweighs the "weight" of the CTR.
Also, once you improve the landing page it can take upto 2 months for Google to re-evaluate your minimum bids, unless you request a manual review. Although, also reported in WebmasterWorld, Google no longer carry out manual reviews - not sure if this is true or not. But AWA did state recently that they were improving the timescales for reviewing QS.
Sorry, but I do believe that Google state somewhere - "and a number of other factors" as well as the bits you mentioned.
That is correct, and according to ewhispers pres. at pubcon, one engineer has indicated over 100 variables involved (but not all the time with everyone), including site based ones.
Bigdealiooooooo has an "official" problem.
If the landing page relevance really sucked and produced an initial low QS and a high Min. Bid. - is it possible that if the ad produces a high CTR in the actual running.. that the Min Bid will be reduced?
Direct answer: Yes, it's possible. But your question isn't a good one. The weighting of CTR in an algo can change depending on all the other variables included in the algo.
That's why you can't say: If CTR increases, min bid will be reduced, because you can't look at any ONE variable in isolation from all the other variables.
So, it might help. It might not. It depends on the interaction of all the factors taken together.
I'm asking you to please stop posting in this thread, because I know from your various posts that you will not have anything of practical value to add.
It may save me a lot of wasted time and effort changing my campaigns in response to speculation, myths and incorrect information that had been stated as facts. It is sad that sometimes this prevents some strategies from being worth pursuing, but sometimes the truth is sad.
If you look back over some previous threads & postings, you will find some very contructive and well research posts on aspects of the Quality Score and how to optimise your site to avoid getting hit by the $10 minumum bids!
[edited by: Pengi at 11:04 pm (utc) on Dec. 3, 2006]
In other words... can high CTR push down the "initial" MinBid which was largely based on the landing page quality?
The short answer is yes.
Essentially, the quality score is re-calculated all the time to take all of the factors into account.
The long answer is that the CTR of the keyword is used (the quality of the ad - the CTR of the keyword) in the QS formula. The most recent impressions are more heavily used than the lifetime of the keyword. Hence, your QS is being updated all the time (along with those ambiguous other factors).
The frequency of the quality score update in regards to landing pages doesn't seem to be consistent. One can make landing page changes and then have to wait until Google re-spiders the page, assigns a new score to that page, and then propagates that data throughout your account.
CTR for me is only ONE of the factors and maybe not all that important.
Some days the CTR is lower than 1% . But I pay less than 5 cents a click. In fact Avg. Bid price is 4.1 cents over the last one month.
If CTR was SO important, I would be dead and buried!
I would tend to make the assumption, that a landing page which has been evaluated as high QS , has an opportunity to further reduce bid prices by improving CTR. CTR by itself, may not wholly determine QS to any great degree. Just my personal experience. I may be completely wrong here. The problem is that with everything so vague,. I have only my and other's experience to come to any tentative conclusions.
Having aff links or adsense will not necessarily hurt you, but if you don't have a lot of content on your page then it probably will.
If CTR is so important, how come my e commerce site with a CTR of 1-1.5% has been re evalauted as high QS with minimum bids of less than 5 cents?
When evaluating a 'good CTR' first, one must only consider CTR on Google.com (not content sites).
Next one must 'normalize' for position. An ad in 8th position is not going to be penalized for not having the same CTR as an ad in 1st position.
Thirdly, one must understand how that keyword preforms in terms of CTR for other sites. A 1% is high for some keywords, a 5% is low for other keywords.
