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New Google Adwords Quality Score Improvements
If you are currently using Google Adwords, you may be interested to hear that Google just made some improvements to its quality score algorithm. In case you are not entirely sure, Google Adwords quality score is a major determinant in how much an advertiser ranks and pays for their keywords relative to competitors. Google’s quality score is based on several factors including but not limited to:
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Relevance of keywords in relation to its Ad Group
- Quality of your landing pages
- Account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
- Relevance of the keyword/ad to the search query
Essentially, the new quality score adds several new components to increase the relevancy of Google’s search and content network results:
- Real-time calculation of relevancy of keywords/ad to search queries
- Keywords will no longer given “inactive” status
- First page bids will replace minimum bids
Probably the most notable variable above is the real time calculation of keywords and ads because campaign optimization enhancements will have an immediate effect within Google’s network. As the landscape of PPC advertisers is highly dynamic, changing ad text and keywords will likely occur more frequently as competitors will want to continually want higher positions and strive for a lower cost per click. In addition, “first page bids” will enable advertisers to see how much it will cost to receive first page exposure without too much guessing with max bids.
There are a lot of mixed opinions on how the above will benefit an advertiser. Over at the Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal has a humorous ending to his post in that he claims these new changes will immediately translate into more revenue for Google. I have to say that although I agree with that statement, I believe that there are many positive outcomes for SEMs that keep a watchful eye on their PPC campaigns. Moreover, I look at these changes as weeding out lesser experienced campaign managers or do it yourselfers that don’t understand the importance of a well structured and organized Adwords account, one of the most critical components in setting up a PPC campaign in my opinion.
In any regards, if you haven’t read about these recent changes and are a Google Adwords advertiser, I would take a moment to familiarize yourself with these recent enhancements.
