November 16th, 2006 by James Omdahl
[UPDATE: If you are a little lost on the whole Quality Score idea, or if you just want to read some great info on the subject, I highly recommend Evolution of the Quality Score parts 1 and 2 by Jay Weintraub. Also, for those more technically inclined, ShoeMoney talks about masking your links...which could save you for the time being.]
Thanks to our super best friends over at the Inside AdWords blog we now have a teeny tiny bit more insight into the recent AdWords Quality Score changes.
Here are the three questions and my summarized answer (slightly rephrased to capture my morning sarcasm):
Did the AdWords team know they were stealing Christmas by rolling out the Quality Score changes right before the holiday season?
Short answer: Yes, but that’s how they roll.
Since click-through-rates and conversion on my website are really good indicators of consumer satisfaction with content, will you be including my Google Conversion Counter or Google Analytics data in your calculation of Quality Score?
Short answer: Nah, even though good click through and conversions usually mean someone found what they are looking for*, we would rather use a complex algorithm that only looks at content. We do this because it will impress our fellow Stanford alumni and make us look cool down in the Google cafeteria.
Will using Website Optimizer, Google’s tool that helps people improve the quality of advertiser’s landing pages, help my landing page’s Quality Score?
Short answer: No, doing something like that would make our Quality Score calculation less mysterious and vague, and then advertisers would have nothing to freak out about over the holiday season…and where’s the fun in that.
Wow, I am pretty sarcastic this morning. Feel free to check out the actual questions and answers on the Inside AdWords blog.
Seriously though, I know Google has a reason for what they do and how they do it, and I respect them for focusing on the searcher’s experience. Still, knowing they have reasons for what they do doesn’t make it hurt and less when you get burned.
For an added bonus, I want to point you to a post from Steve Bryant called Top 5 Google Weaknesses. And no, kryptonite is not one of them. (Thanks to Big Pete S. for the link!)
* before someone points it out, I know that if conversion data was used for quality score it would be very easy to game the system…but I am sure the mega-brains at Google could figure out how to get around the problem.
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November 16th, 2006 at 10:07 am
“For example, an ad may promote a new home for sale in San Francisco for the query San Francisco homes, but after clicking on the ad, the user is taken to a page that shows houses in Seattle. This is not a particularly good experience for the user — but the ad itself could still be highly relevant to the keyword, and thus is likely to have a high CTR.”
ha ha - or an adv may promote free online insurance quotes, and then take them to a page that offers free online insurance quotes - and that might be a bad experience too.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:08 am
LOL (and cry a little too)! Good point Mar
November 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am
I have to post - that today Im still getting cheap traffic from the content network of google. If terms go inactive on the search network, I just leave them, so its probably really a price thing. i.e. I am priced out. Of course that search traffic is gold, but I havent come up with a magic term yet.
November 17th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Hi James. My trackback failed, so heres a manual trackback: …For a funny take on these answers from Google, read Inside AdWords Answers Three of the One Million Questions Asked About Quality Score (by James Omdahl)…
November 20th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Thanks for the manual trackback
- I am glad you enjoyed this post.
Good work on your post as well. (read it here.)
I appreciate your theory about how this change is a generally good thing for people who use AdWords and build content that is considered “high quality.”
The thing is, it seems to be hitting affiliates harder than anyone, and since we love our affiliates, we hate to see them hurting.
The way I am looking at this is that as long as these changes are really focused on nabbing AdSense arbitrage sites, I am happy. But the fallout from this seems to reach much further - and there could be some good sites out there that are getting caught up in over sensitive filters.
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:57 am
Hi all!
Gnight
December 19th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
I believe “mega-brains” deserves an asterisk and a footnote too…
December 20th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Ha ha! Good one Steve