Does the landing page affect Quality Score

[netfleet]

I was told a couple of years ago, by my Google rep, that it doesn't. However I am having doubts or maybe it has changed.

They said the landing page is assessed on a yes/no basis and, if it get's the tick, the ad will be shown and it's down to the other metrics to calculate QS.

As an aside, can anybody list all the confirmed facyors for QS please?

Many thanks

[LucidSW]

Quality Score, as best as can be determined piecing all the clues given is:

65% CTR. Your CTR is compared to competitors historical average and a standard deviation calculation made, QS of 5 being the mean. It's also adjusted by position.

25% keyword relevancy. I've always taken that as a yes/no factor. If your page is about dog food, any keyword deviating from that theme will not be relevant. So "dog food" and "puppy nutrition" should pass but not "dog medicine" or anything else. You can't be a little bit relevant just like you can't be a little bit pregnant. I admit there may be more to it than that but that's the general idea and essentially what you've been told.

In short, the rep was correct as far as keywords are concerned: you can't SEO your page as some suggest and improve your QS. Your keywords either are relevant or they're not. Google determines themes to your pages and if your keywords' theme match, you're OK and adding more of the keyword into your copy won't change that, unless it was so badly written the system can't determine your theme.

There is rule compliance to take into account as well, also a yes/no factor. If you have a bridge page for example, your QS drops to 1 and your ads don't run. It's the off switch. If that's the case, then yes, technically landing page does affect QS. But this appears to be outside the main QS calculation of CTR and relevancy. Fix the compliance issue and your QS is restored based on the normal performance factors.

The other 10% is "other factors". The only other I know Google has mentioned is page loading time and my guess is that it's half of this or 5% overall so not a big hit in QS even if your page is really slow.

[RhinoFish]

Factors per G:
[support.google.com...]

I do concur with LucidSW, CTR trumps all others - but landing page quality does matter.

As you look thru the factors, note how many references are made to CTR.
:-)

[netfleet]

Thank you- that's what I thought. Just been puzzled over some scores eg the following KW all have QS as 4:

ClicksImpr.CTRAvg. Pos.
59712,4194.81%3.5
3292,04616.08%2.6
1052,9803.52%2.8
3423714.35%2.1
316065.12%4.2
303668.20%2.8
2715417.53%2.1
261,6771.55%2.9
256339.68%2
2111418.42%2.3
204344.61%5.1

I mean over 15% CTR for a position 2+ should be pretty good shouldn't it? (for these searches all 10 adwords spots are always filled)

Saying that the average CPC is generally about half the max CPC so it doesn't feel as if the KWs are being treated as just a QS of 4

BTW my site is on a dedicated server so page loading time should be good.

[netfleet]

Sorry that table's not easy to read! Top two for example are:

597 clicks from 12419 imp for CTR of 4.81, av pos 3.5
329 clicks from 2046 imps for CTR of 16.08, av pos 2.6

you get the drift....

[LucidSW]

>> over 15% CTR for a position 2+ should be pretty good shouldn't it?

If you're happy with that, sure. But what does the QS say? If it says 6, your competitors are getting way more than that. I have keywords getting 40%+ at that position.

Not that every keyword should or will get that percentage at that position in all niches. If the historical average is 15% and you get 15%, your QS will be 5. If the historical average is 5% and you get 15%, your QS will be higher, probably a 10 in such a case. It's all relative by keyword and position to the historical average. I've seen keywords in the top two positions with a CTR of 1% and get a QS of 10. This tells me that most competitors are not doing well, likely not getting any clicks at the bottom of the page.

That's why you should not worry about the absolute CTR number, which is heavily dependent on position anyway. Instead, look at the QS. It's the relative number of how well you are doing compared to other advertisers. That's your goal, to beat the other guy and Google with Quality Score is telling you how well you are doing.

The QS probably follows a fairly smooth bell curve in most cases. A QS of 1-3 is poor and 20% of advertisers will fall there. QS of 4-6 is average and 60% will fall within that range. The other 20% will be 7 to 10 and that's your goal, to be on that side of the curve.

[RhinoFish]

That's why you should not worry about the absolute CTR number, which is heavily dependent on position anyway. Instead, look at the QS. It's the relative number of how well you are doing compared to other advertisers. That's your goal, to beat the other guy and Google with Quality Score is telling you how well you are doing.

Amen to that!