In response to my request to Google to help fix an effectively new account with extremely poor landing page quality score throughout, Google responded with the following email:
"I've confirmed that your website was not correctly evaluated by our system, and we've fixed this error. After you unpause your campaigns, you should see improvements to your Quality Score shortly after, reflected by higher Quality Score details for your keywords."
Background:
- Existing account that ran briefly last year, and then was paused until recently.
- Website is seasonal retailer.
- Created new campaigns and relaunched a couple of weeks ago.
- We're an agency with Google phone support.
After launching the new campaigns, I let them run for about a week. At that point I discovered that every keyword had a 1/10 QS, with the landing page factor being the problem (identified by viewing the little icon that gives details on keyword display eligibility). There were no problems in keyword relevance or load time.
I wasn't able to find anything in the landing pages that seemed to conflict with Google's landing page quality guidelines, so I called Google support. The agent couldn't find any problems either and agreed that this was odd. She escalated the problem to their Landing Page Quality Score team.
After a day, I received an email with the explanation above, citing an error when their "system" evaluated the landing pages. They gave no further details about the nature of the error or the correction.
The moral of the story: Despite the veil of mystery that surrounds so much of Google and makes accountability seem impossible at times, sometimes you just pick up the phone and discover real people who admit and fix their mistakes.
