WebProNews » Quality Score

Google Launches Ad Quality Guide

Chris Crum — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:53:20 +0000

Google has introduced a new search ads quality "getting started" guide. The guide addresses frequently asked questions from users and offers additional tips about how to improve ad quality.

Since introducing the concept back in July 2005, we’ve done a lot of work to make Quality Scores more detailed, accurate, and transparent," says Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew. "These improvements have included adding landing page load time, offering score diagnosis on the Keyword Analysis page, and displaying first page bid estimates."

"The new Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide is a resource for how you can get the most out of your search advertising on Google," he adds. "While we’re not making any changes to the way Quality Score works, the guide is organized to help you understand some of the most important concepts around quality, such as: how quality score affects your ranking and how quality score affects how much you pay."

The guide continues helpful videos, and plenty of explanation. It begins with an intro, then talks about what quality score is. After that, it gets into 10 things to know, quality and what you pay, and improving your ad quality. There is also a forum.

If quality score is a topic you’re interested in, you should check out this article based on a session this week at Search Engine Strategies. You’ll find some helpful tips in there as well.

Juice Up Your PPC Quality Score from the Get Go

Chris Crum — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:33:38 +0000

Abby Johnson of WebProNews had a nice chat with FindMeFaster’s Matt Van Wagner about PPC campaign strategies and ad copy at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle this week. For one, they discussed how to get a good quality score right from the beginning. Talk about your strategies for achieving a good quality score.

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A couple tactics discussed by Van Wagner include:

- Determining what your competitors are paying for their ads, and approximately what their quality score is by doing a little "competitive analysis."

- Pulling reports from the search engines periodically and using excel to generate a an optimized bid list. He says this does 80% of what a lot of the good tools out there do – for FREE.

Google Gives Details On Ads Quality Updates

Doug Caverly — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:42:23 +0000

Ads Quality concerns any and every marketer who’s the least bit interested in his ads’ positions and prices, and Google recently complicated things by making a few changes. Luckily, Google also documented the updates’ specifics, and advertisers should find two new videos on Ads Quality very useful.

The first clip doesn’t so much cover the updates as provide a general overview of Ads Quality and Quality Score. It’s ten minutes long, making it a fairly efficient way of either reexamining the basics or catching up in the first place.

The second video is shorter, clocking in at less than seven minutes, and it hits the fresh alterations along with how they’ll affect the average advertiser. A voiceover explains, "We will now evaluate quality score each time a user performs a search," which should lead to more "accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information."

Also, "We will no longer show minimum bids in your account" ("first page bids" are being favored instead), and the "inactive for search" status has been removed, because "keywords can be evaluated for any query for which they are relevant." The three different statuses are now "active," "ads show rarely due to low quality scores," and "bid is below first page estimate."

All of this should put advertisers in a better position. More improvements are on the way, as well, so keep an eye out for additional clips in the future.

Experiments In Google Quality Scores

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:47:21 +0000

A lot has been made about quality scores for Google ads. Rated on a scale of 1 to 10 per keyword targeted, the quality score is the ultimate determinant of ad placement on the search results. As webmasters experiment, tips for how to achieve a perfect 10 are emerging in the forums.

Google recently explained why the highest bid on a keyword doesn’t always guarantee top spot to advertiser. It has more to do with the relevance of the ad and the likelihood of being clicked. A big bid with high relevance and high likelihood of making Google money wins. Likewise, a small bid with high relevance and likelihood of being clicked a bunch of times and making Google more money wins.

In the Search Engine Watch forum, a member posted initial success with this recipe:

Take two-word keyword phrase, mix in new domain: word1word2.com. Do not add navigation, ads, or links. Add both words in title tag, write about keywords, run ad for keywords and use new webpage as landing page. Let stand, Google quality score serves 10. Cost: one red cent.

At least at first. It’s unknown if the quality score sticks over time without links or anything else.

At Digital Point, one poster achieved his QS10 score in these ways:

1.    Maximum three keywords per ad campaign.
2.    Eliminated words Google suggested.
3.    Estimated CPC bid to third-spot level
4.    Geo-targeted campaigns, limiting to only areas where merchant can sell
5.    Limited to timing to periods of peak interest
6.    Tested versions of keywords, eliminating what didn’t work well

Well, there you have it, the latest in QS testing. Happy experimenting.

Hat tip to Search Engine Roundtable.

Google Explains Quality Scores

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:09:44 +0000

It’s kind of nifty how forthcoming Google has been with the transparency lately. For the longest time, trying to get anything out of them was like trying to squeeze a nickel out of Ed McMahon. The latest explanations of how things work is a blog post describing how quality scores work and why the highest bidder doesn’t always get highest placement in the sponsored results.

Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, at the official Google Blog uses a simple analogy of two sellers with different offerings who might use the same keywords: a guy who sells actual jets, and a guy who sells models of jets. The guy who sells real jets bids a lot more per click than the guy who sells models because leads are obviously worth a lot more to him.

However, the jet-seller’s links don’t get clicked as often as the model-seller’s, which puts Google in a conundrum that’s solved with the quality score. Google multiplies the maximum cost per click of an ad by the quality score, which is determined by historical click-through rates, quality of landing page, keyword relevance, ad relevance, and performance in a geographic area, among other factors, to determine placement.

Thus, the lower bid could achieve higher placement because it’s more likely to be clicked, which, in theory, accomplishes three things: makes Google more money, provides a relevant lead to the advertiser, and provides a relevant direction for the searcher.

“The quality score gives search engines a way of aligning the incentives of the buyers, the sellers, and the viewers of ads,” writes Varian. “The search engine wants to sell ad impressions, but advertisers want to pay for clicks. The solution is for advertisers to bid on a cost-per-click basis, while the search engine estimates the total value of the ad over time: bid per click times the expected number of clicks.”

Google Now Penalizing For Slow Landing Pages

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:00:01 +0000

There’s an extra factor in the Quality Score for AdWords clients, tied into the speed (or lack thereof) of their landing pages.

Google wants a faster experience for the people who click through an ad to the destination page. A slow landing page stuffed with other ads and third party content may not be what the typical Internet users wants when clicking through what looks like a useful ad.

The Inside AdWords blog announced the arrival of landing page speed as a regular factor in determining ad Quality Scores. Provide a fast page, and a better Quality Score should lead to lower minimum bids for keywords.

Provide a slow, stuffed-up experience, and Google will make those bids a pricier prospect. “Users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load,” said Google.

Bad experiences may mean less conversions for advertisers, but worse for Google, they could mean a reluctance by people to click on other ads. Unclicked ads mean no revenue for Google, leading to their attempts in recent months to aggressively root out what it sees as lower quality ad practices.

Landing page load time information for AdWords clients joined the management interface in May. Webmasters with slow pages have their work cut out for them, and will need to do some cost analysis to determine if higher bids charged by Google would be offset by whatever factors contribute to the slow landing page speed.

Page Load Times Affect AdWords Quality Score

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:53:08 +0000

Thanks to the diligence of a marketer (i.e., not to an announcement from Google), it is now known that Google instituted a new factor in determining the quality score for AdWords ads: landing page load time. In brief: slow landing page load times negatively impact quality scores, which increases minimum bids and ad placement rankings.

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(Photo Credit: Google )

Google made the change around February 8th, but it would be a month before a WebmasterWorld forum member discovered the change by sifting through several hundred pages of the AdWords FAQ. What would drive a person to do such a thing? Jkwilson78 says it was because of a poor keyword quality score, which means more money for not as good placement.

Judging by the suffering ROIs expressed by commentators in a previous article regarding Google’s new quality initiatives, not everybody is convinced cracking down on advertiser quality will help Google’s bottom line, or advertisers’. MSN, with its significantly higher ROI may be looking mighty attractive to advertisers lately, even if the volume is less.

But lower click volume for higher ROI is Google’s apparent goal. The philosophy: high quality advertisers provide higher incentive to click and better relevancy to searchers, and justify not only higher cost-per-click, but also an elitist placement scheme.

Google’s relative silence about the change, though, leaves lots of room for speculation. They’re usually much more upfront about things that are not their core algorithm. It makes one wonder if Google is better-dealing smaller search marketers, who helped propel Google to glory well in advance of major brands, for big-budget clients. They do have shareholders to think about these days, and also the leverage of market share to make demands even in open auction settings.

I suppose it was inevitable.

At any rate (that being a higher rate), search marketers will from now on have to not only pay special attention to their web sites for organic search reasons, but also for paid search reasons. Load-time requirements shouldn’t be that much of a surprise—it’s been an algorithmic factor for some time.

The quality score is either negatively impacted or not impacted by load time—not positively influenced. It’s determined once a month, which leaves an obvious question: If my quality score is lowered, but then I fixed the load time, will I have to wait another month to see my quality score raised back to normal? Or, can load time, a good score for which doesn’t raise my quality score, restore the score to the original at all?

Google issued some tips for improving load times, which is all we get for now:

· Use fewer redirects.
· Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.
· Do not use interstitial pages.
· Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.
· Contact your webmaster or webhosting provider to discuss other ways of improving your website’s load time.

A word of warning from Barry Schwartz: Watch out for dubious claims from hosting companies guaranteeing faster page load times, especially if they’re based on geographical proximity to Google’s servers. "Watch the hosting space, companies may be marketing higher Google AdWords quality scores guarantees with their hosting agreements."

Where there’s opportunity, there are opportunists. Some of the more skilled of them are working for el Goog these days.

eBay Changes Could Kill Some Businesses

Aaron Wall — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:08:36 +0000

eBay announced they are planning on launching something like a quality score:

John Donahoe will set out a plan to reward the company’s best sellers with sales incentives and priority ranking in search results for auction items.

"Sellers that describe items accurately, ship on time, and ship at a fair price will enjoy preferential pricing and discounts on eBay," [John] Donahoe said in prepared remarks. "We’re serious about making eBay easier and safer to shop."

On February 20 the changes will start taking place. Depending on how serious eBay is about this change, many eBay based businesses may die. But they also plan on lowering initial listing fees and trying to get more commission when items sell, which could lead to more junk listings as the opportunity cost is lower. If you are one of a few legit sellers in a market saturated with scams perhaps this helps increase margins, but eBay will have a hard time bring back buyers who got scammed in the past or sellers who were sick of years of rate increases.

It is remarkable that eBay has been around over a decade and are just finally getting around to making these kinds of changes. If they didn’t have a near monopoly there is no way they could have waited this long.

I understand why some people sell on eBay, but for anyone who has been doing it for a long time I wonder why they don’t create a site and sell direct. Being stuck in someone else’s network where quality scores can make you irrelevant is a risky way to make a living.

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Which adWords Topics Got the Most Attention in 2007?

Christine Parfitt — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:22:13 +0000

Which adwords topics got the most attention in 2007? Here’s my top 5 list. What have I missed and what will be important in 2008?

1. Quality Score

This is always a favourite for discussion given that it has such an impact on campaign performance. It’s also complex and therefore susceptible to misinterpretation. Brad Geddes does a good job of explaining quality score.

2. New Adwords features – Top Ad Placement

The one that caused the biggest debate ahead of implementation would have to be the changes to the formula for top ad placement. Bloggers and forumites jumped on the idea that it would unfairly drive adwords costs up. Most commentators didn’t even bother to read the announcement properly or stop and think about it but jumped on the bandwagon once the consensus of opinion was reached. I’ve seen hardly any feedback since it was launched.

3. Most Maligned Adwords Feature – Expanded Broad Match

Expanded broad match would have to win the prize for the most hated feature. Here are a couple of “expanded match is EVIL” forum threads.

4. SEO versus PPC

The best posts on this were those describing how they work well together rather than one being better than the other but maybe I’m biased. Here’s a recent post from Dave Naylor with an example of organic and ppc working well together.

5. Pricing Models

How you charge for PPC services is always a favourite for debate. Alan Rimm-Kaufman shared his agency’s model and rates in a bid to open up the secrecy about pricing and structure.

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7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 hours

Michael Jensen — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:47:20 +0000

Most SEO’s will advise you to buy an existing site/domain (lots of age benefit), but there are times when you need to start from scratch with a fresh domain.

It can sometimes take a couple of weeks to get a new domain indexed by Google (even longer to start ranking!). In order to speed up the process of getting your site indexed quickly, even in 24 hours, follow the steps outlined below:

1) Create 5 pages of content

Skip the “under construction” page and write several pages of real content, at least a few paragraphs.

2) Create Internal Links to your Pages

Put the content in a template with a menu structure to make this step easier. You can find free templates at oswd.org and other places, at least to get started. Link to the content through the menu, and if you have a major landing page, link to it from the content of a page or two.

3) Tag on Social Bookmarking Sites

After just a few minutes to create an account with these sites you can submit a link to your site. This gives you an instant way for Google and other search engines to find your site because these social bookmarking sites get visited by the search engine bots (like the Googlebot) quite regularly. A few bookmarking sites to recommend: Del.icio.us, BlinkList, StumbleUpon.com, and Furl. Make sure you tag them with common words, like those you find on their tag clouds (BlinkList has a good one, just scroll down on the page to see it).

4) Comment on popular and recent blogs (with your link)

Find 5 blogs that are fairly popular, relevant to your site, and have a recent blog post (last day or two). Read the post and add a comment that contributes to the discussion, including a link to your site in the URL field.

5) Create, Submit, and Ping your XML Sitemap

You can create a free XML sitemap here then upload the file to your site (just save it as sitemap.xml). Then ping Google with your sitemap by typing in the following URL in your browser, replacing the domain name with your own:

http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

Next, create an account with Google Webmaster Central, add your site, and submit your XML sitemap.

6) Install Google Analytics

Add Google Analytics (free) to your site. Don’t forget to verify your site with them to get the data collection started.

7) Run some Google Ads

Create an account with Google Adwords and start running some ads, even if its just for the domain name, company name, or some long tail keywords. Google has to go to your site because of their quality score, which includes “your landing page quality”. Just spend a couple of bucks and it can help jumpstart the indexing.

With these steps, you should see your site indexed fairly quickly. I can’t guarantee the 24 hours, but it is possible. At the very least it will speed up the indexing significantly (from weeks to days). Look for the “googlebot” to visit in your site analytics. Then look for your site to show up with Google by doing a search with the site: operator (for example, site:sphinn.com). Enjoy!

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