AdWords Quality Score and Conversion tracking

[EvilDan]

I have been noticing that Google is increasing the minimum quality score bid amounts with each sale I make. I use conversion tracking, which is my best guess as to what Google is up to.

And when I set up some sites without conversion tracking, i got lots of traffic, but no conversions (which makes me wonder as to the quality of traffic being sent to me if I dont use the conversion tracking system).

am I smelling something fishy, or should I tuck my Fox Mulder tail between my legs?

oh - and for one of my best sites, only keywords that ever made money/sales were hit with the quality score issue. The rest of the words were left untouched.

[EvilDan]

i cant believe no one else has a comment to add to this thread
my fox mulderism is off the chart now

[RhinoFish]

i've seen zero correlation between quality scoring and conversion tracking. doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that i personally haven't seen it.

[netmeg]

Me neither, and I've been doing conversion tracking from the getgo.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I have been noticing that Google is increasing the minimum quality score bid amounts with each sale I make. I use conversion tracking, which is my best guess as to what Google is up to....

Although I don't really expect to convince anyone who stronly suspects otherwise, I'll repeat the comment I have frequently made when this same 'theory' has come up in the past:

Your conversion tracking information is not used in this way.

AWA

[BigSpender]

" Your conversion tracking information is not used in this way. "

Okay AWA, so how does Google use our tracking information?

[benevolent001]

:) Cool query , Yes AWA

[EvilDan]

Hi There AWA

I can actually show you one of my campaigns wherein only the keywords I have made money on have been affected by the quality score. Any words I never made sales on haven't been affected at all.

And another thing I have noticed is that my minimum bid keeps creeping up on certain keywords. To me it does seem like the system is designed to increase our payments.

Please note AWA - I love the Google AdWords systems, and I plan on continuing to work on trying to make my stuff as ship shape as possible. But this quality score thingie has really made my life very hard, and my only option as I see things is to not bid on so many words (thus decreasing my overall spend with you).

[BigSpender]

Hi EvilDan,

We had similar concerns though we never did a hardcore analysis. A few months ago we removed all conversion tracking and google analytics from our sites because Google would never give clear answers on how they use this data. Our assumption was that if they use it for things we would be excited about, then they wouldn't hesitate to tell us. That they wouldn't reveal how they use our data didn't sit well with us.

[edited by: BigSpender at 12:35 am (utc) on May 28, 2007]

[Hiccup]

Why would a company who makes virtually all it's profit from adwords ever use conversion data to jack up your bids to make more money for their shareholders?

Naw, that wouldn't happen, they do no evil and aren't about making money.

Oh and AWA really works at google too...LOL

[mai_tai]

This is precisely why we haven't taken Google conversion tracking on. I'm pretty sure that they use it purely for their benefit.

[EvilDan]

thank you everyone - i think I have my answer now ;-)