"Widget Health Discussion Forums"
"Discuss Widget Health here with others."
The keyword is "Widget Forum"
And clicking the ad goes to a forum WITH plenty of active disscussions, that is specifically a "Widget Forum"
Ok, soomeone searching G specifically searches for a "Widget Forum". They see my ad, and they find EXACTLY THAT, a "Widget forum" and not a DOA one either.
How much more "Quality" should I need? For cryin out load I am giving them EXACLY what they are searching for, no grey area here...
Sounds more like a play for more money per bid then it does quality control. Why get punished with a higher fee for providing EXACTLY what the user is searching for?
Try making a custom landing page; one that is cleaner and focused on the keywords you're targeting. Make it interesting for the users, too, by "selling" them on the benefits they can get from reading and contributing to your forum. Maybe link them to some of the best recent threads. This way, you get more control over the content of the landing page and you can test it, tweak it, etc. without affecting the rest of your site.
The other important factor in the keyword quality score is the CTR. If your CTR is very low (like under 1%), then you'll probably want to try to improve the ad copy or the keywords being used.
Just some thoughts.
At first glance, I would ponder how "Widget Forums" might not have the quality you think. If it's a broad phrase, you have to consider it would match on both Widget and Forums, which would obviously dilute the results. An exact match on "Widget Forums" seems like it would be better quality, but I suppose it depends on what widget actually represents - this may be a word used in a highly competitive market and it may be inferring you need to increase the bid just to compete. (?) I know the word Forums is certainly in that arena.
I think the CTR of your ads competes also with organic results CTR. CTR, search volume and ad history are much more important factors.
According to my analysis there is no direct correlation between keywords on landing page and keywords in your ad. It may be a factor, but not a very large one.
We have QS "great" for keywords that do not even appear on the landing page.
If your keyword is widget, then you need to add a lot of key words that are tightly related to your ad group.
For example...
blue widget
red widget
red synonim
blue widget synonim
And so forth. Make sure that your keywords stay around your main keyword and add as many as you can.
The bot will see that you are referring to the particular subject and will give you QS of great and minimum bids 2-5 cents.
Good luck.
Basically, you get Poor QS when a bot can't figure out what you are trying to do.
Also, most of the time, when you start a campaign, your QS goes poor, but after you spend some time on optimization, your QS should be great.
In your case, you have not optimized your adwords ads the way the bot wants them.
Learn how to please the bot, and the bot will start pleasing you :)
So concentrate on all these and you will definitely see some difference.
We only have an "OK" QS for our own domain name!
Use the adwords keyword tool (Site related keywords) on your own site and see if it returns relevant results.
Try experimenting with match types. Create new ads and "re-add" your keywords.
If all else fails, create a custom landing page specifically targeting your keyword and try again.
Welcome to the ambiguous world of AdWords (Or anything Google related for that matter) ;)
After that, the clickthrough rate is critical - if people aren't clicking on your advert, it's not a good advert. Try to figure out what's wrong with it by searching for the term, and seeing which advert you'd click on. Chances are that somebody's got a more eye-catching and compelling advert.
If your advert has the right title and a good clickthrough rate, you should get a good QS, even with a fairly weak landing page...
If a "human" and not a "bot" did the QS it would pass inspection as being "dead on" easily, a real no-brainer. Even with all the thoughtful responses, it still does not clear it up for me.
"Widget forums" is just an example I give you here because we cannot post specifics. But the "actual" phrase and words are DEAD ON what the forum is about. Not only that, but that ad is to attract someone looking to *talk* about widgets, not to "buy" or "sell" but to "talk".
And that is exactly what the user that clicks that ad gets, a discussion forum on widgets, no shades of grey, straight-up what you asked for, you got.
Something is terribly flawed in the QS algo to say "Increase quality or bid". I thought QS was specifically to weed out bait an switch tricksters and MFAs... It is adversely effecting what adwords was specifically intended for...
Have you tried the "peel and stick" method to put some focus on a few keywords you think have the most potential?
I did not do anything to my campaigns at all so naturally I was jubilant.
But today?
The old min bids of $1.00 are back & marked "poor".
Mr GoogleBot, can you please make up your mind? Or is it a Ms GoogleBot, lol.
