Quality Score- All About Competition and Profit

Ridiculous Results of Latest Update

[luke175]

So I was "slapped" with the latest round of updates on March 5th. It's not the first time...but here's what's unreal.

All the keywords slapped had good histories. Many of them had 15-25% CTRs and 5-15% conversion rates. Obviously people found what they were looking for.

All these keywords got bumped to $10 minimum bid.

Now, here's what's interesting. All of these keywords were in adgroups that contained maybe 2-5 keywords total and were VERY targeted.

I'm talking keyword "[buy red widget]" and the ad is:

Red Widget Store
Buy Red Widgets at the
Red Widget Secure Store.
www.site.com/red-widget.htm

All these adgroups- boom $10.

Now, I have an adgroup advertising this site under the same campaign that is full of total garbage. It was added years ago when there was not a quality score.

I dumped hundreds of keywords into this adgroup that were generated from one of those "keyword finder" type programs. Some of them are like "new york red widget talk horse". Yes, that bad.

Well, way back during the first quality score "update" these words all went to "Poor" and got $10 bids. I understood that. They were garbage.

I let this adgroup sit dormant since then. Well, after the March 5th "update" where all my good campaigns went into "poor" this entire adgroup went "Great" and got .05 bids!

It's hysterical if it wasn't so sick.

It seems obvious that my targeted ads weren't as profitable as some others so they got tanked. my garbage phrases have no competition any way so I guess Google thinks they're great now.

[luke175]

My complete garbage phrases are still sitting at "Great!" .05 bids.

I guess "widget store" is the wrong keyword to advertise a widget store with, but "greek pencil widget talk" is worthy of a great score.

[tlehne]

I have 20 keywords, and all but three of them have not quality score. Our website is all about "widgets", very straight forward and honest, nothing even slightly shady, many satisfied customers. Now guess what one of the three keywords with quality score is! It's of course "widgets".

Google's quality score algorithm is either a sinister marketing plot to squeeze more money out of advertisers' pockets or just plain #*$!. I hope it's the second, because they could fix that.

[JBrown]

I'm wondering if they are penalizing ads that match the keywords too closely. Think of the all those eBay and similar ads:

Searching for Widgets?
We Have Widgets Here.
Come Find Widgets.
widgetswidgets.com/widgets

Maybe Google is using all that matching as an indicator of poor quality.

[heyday]

wow, maybe I'll turn all my old stuff back on! Spending 20K a month two years ago till everything got Slapped.....

[conor]

Certainly matching 'too closley' in an 'un-ntural way' can do more harm than good to Quality Score. Watch the display URL in this especially!

[JBrown]

conor, that's frustrating. Quality Score is such a black box. I've recently started adding the keyword to the display URL. I didn't realize QS is now penalizing that practice.

[bw3ttt]

Having the keyword in the domain name does not hurt your QS..

That would cause massive collateral damage. Google will not throw out the baby with the bath water..

[luke175]

Of interest is that one of my main keywords currently ranks my site on the first page of Google's organic results. But to advertise under that same term is $10 even under exact match with only that keyword in the ad group.

[briggidere]

We're seeing it all over the place. Nothing is stable and you have no idea which account will get hit next.

Some of the best performing accounts we have, have been blasted into QS oblivion BUT we have a few clickbank, ebook clients (only links on page go there) and they have GREAT QS's.

Go Figure

[fischermx]

luke:
That's the kind of things that drives me crazy!
It happened to me, too. :(

[kidder]

Yeah it makes me wonder, I've slowly been reduced from a million dollar business to a #*$! business by this stupid QS crap. The market should set the price not share holder greed. I think once you meet a certain page QS then market forces should come into play. That very same QS should be fairly minimal and easy to understand. Oh well, my 15k per month spend is almost done and I'm much better at organic SEO as a result. Thanks Google.