Google.com quality score

[bcc1234]

Title: Search engine
Description1: A search engine.
Description2: Find stuff on the web.
Display URL: www.google.com
Landing URL: [google.com...]

Keyword:
google - Poor - Minimum bid: $5.00

Oh well...

[bcc1234]

This is actually very logical that the page would have a high min bid.

Someone looking for a "search engine" would probably be more likely looking for a searching enigne rather than a description of search engines and what they are and what they do.

I guess that's one of the problems Adwords guys are working on.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I found this thread to be quite interesting, and thought a couple of colleagues on the Ads Quality team would like to see it as well. So I sent them a link to the thread, and asked if they'd like to comment.

Here's the reply that came back:

Actually, this is expected behavior based on the Quality Score. We have lots of information about the performance of the keyword 'google' over time and have found that the vast majority of these ads are low quality. In addition, from a user's perspective, there's little to no value in seeing an ad when the user can already get to Google through the search results that we show for this query. Because of this, these ads tend to have a very low CTR, which will impact the Quality Score for this keyword across all accounts. As you know, historical keyword performance is factored into the Quality Score and, therefore, helps to set the minimum bid for your keyword. If our system has a lot of data around a particular keyword, such as 'google', and is confident that it will not perform well, it will receive a low Quality Score and high minimum bid until the performance of that keyword in an individual account proves otherwise.

AWA

[bcc1234]

AdWordsAdvisor, that's a good reply, thanks. But that doesn't explain why in one account that search term would get minimum cpc of $0.50 while in another it would get $5 -- and neither of the accounts have ever used that word before.

[kdobson99]

That was a very revealing comment from your colleague AWA, and one that I thank you for posting. For all of my gripes about QS and its effect on my time allocation and strange results, I appreciate the comment.

Now, one EXTREMELY important thing that comes from that quote is the following:

In addition, from a user's perspective, there's little to no value in seeing an ad when the user can already get to Google through the search results that we show for this query.

I can't interpret this comment any other way than by concluding that a high natural serp positioin can (perhaps "will") negatively effect your quality score in adwords. Going to have to think on this one for a bit to grasp the significance... but I think it is a huge revelation and perhaps an indication of why people are being charged so much for their business names. Maybe we are all confused about the word "Quality" in QS, because a natural conclusion before this post would have been that sites ranking high in natural seprs would be assumed to be of higher quality. Can I take my conclusion to the bank that good serp CAN mean bad QS?

I would also appreciate some clarification on the difference between my min bid on 'google' being 20 cents, and the other guy $5.

Also... the quote indicates that over time if your ad performs well, you can increase your quality score and decrease the minimum bid. I have seen this happen, but have no idea how long it would take. I would pay $5 for some clicks if after a small sample of data the system would improve my QS. If it would take months of $5 clicks... I wouldn't try.

I am presently entirely out of adwords search, and playing content only because I just can't "get it" without spending way too much time trying to make google happy. I'm willing to start bending if the whole QS thing becomes a little more transparent and this post was a good start.

[mimmo]

The answer confirms that the organic results are about relevancy and the Adwords ads are about revenues (advertising)

[shorebreak]

KDobson,

You took just one *possible* meaning of that statement and are reading into it something that they may or may not have meant by it. As much as I agree that QS changes are more about $ than quality (better monetization *is* usually in line with better user experience though), I also think that if organic position affected QS people on this board would have figured that out a long time ago, right?

-Shorebreak

[eWhisper]

If our system has a lot of data around a particular keyword, such as 'google', and is confident that it will not perform well, it will receive a low Quality Score and high minimum bid until the performance of that keyword in an individual account proves otherwise.

I thought one of the purposes of the last QS update was for accounts with a high QS to be given a little slack on these types of keywords.

[kdobson99]

shorebreak - I'm not trying to read anything into it or make it a bigger issue than it is... but I can't read another explanation into it. It does explain some of the things I have been experiencing where I have been chasing higher and higher mins, on some keywords where pages already rank in natural results.

Again, I don't view it as a good thing or bad thing... but just a thing that might be the cause of some of this.

[sailorjwd]

What exactly does 'not perform well' mean?

Sounds like most of the information in this thread says for a least a major part of the QS it doesn't have anything to do with the landing page.

Does Not Perform Well mean rarely searched for, thereby killing the Long Tail keywords?

Does reference to easily finding the topic in the natural search results explain why I can't advertise for a 3 word keyword where my site appears in #3 position for 150mil results?

I often find the same min bids on keywords phrases whether one of the keywords doesn't appear on the landing page or whether the three keywords have the highest density on the landing page.

I guess that is why I've gone from $500 to $15 / day advertising on Adwords. Very frustrating