Today’s topic is the fourth in a series of 5 blog posts focused on Quality Score. There has been some question as to how account history can affect your overall quality score. In a recent discussion with Google reps it was said that your account history doesn’t directly affect your quality score; however, they also insisted that your account history is incredibly important to the success of your campaigns. In this post I’d like to outline two theories on how your performance history may affect your quality score: moving VS. deleting and re-inserting keywords.

Poor performing keywords can affect an entire ad group. So, do you delete these keywords and re-submit them into another ad group? Or do you move these keywords into a new ad group using a tool like AdWords Editor? The answers to these questions rely on how much you want to affect your account’s history.

Maintaining your performance history will allow AdWords to monitor your campaign’s progress (which is hopefully a good thing!), and AdWords tends to favor accounts that have been active for longer periods of time and that have a rich performance history.

Moving keywords does not impede your history whatsoever. When optimizing your account you can shift keywords between ad groups seamlessly. In fact, you SHOULD be moving your keywords periodically because you should always be improving your keyword grouping.

Deleting and re-inserting your keywords may erase important aspects of your history, and this can hinder your account. If you want to give certain keywords a “fresh start” you may want to try this method. But keep in mind that deleting/re-inserting doesn’t guarantee that these under performing keywords will suddenly spring to life. In fact, according to Google Adwords help section,

“If you delete a keyword and then add it back to your account in any other format or any other location (placing it in another ad group, for instance), our system will still take the keyword’s past account-wide performance into consideration. A poor performer can affect an entire ad group and/or campaign, if it is used multiple times.”

Brad Geddes has also written on how low quality keywords can lower other keywords quality scores. Brad thinks that if you have many under-performing keywords within your account you should definitely get rid of them from a quality score stand point.

So which method is best? In my opinion, if you have under-performing keywords you should delete them to zero out their score, and give them another shot at life. When it comes to your core, best-performing keywords, avoid deleting these at all costs. Was today’s blog post helpful? Stay tuned to PPC Hero, our Google AdWords Quality Score Guide is coming soon!

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• Expand Your View on Google’s Quality Score and See Your Campaign Grow!
• How To Launch a New Keyword: Hit the Ground Running!
• Avoid the AdWords Quality Score Slap: How to Make Common Changes to Your Account Without Damaging Your Quality Score
• What Makes Google AdWords Tick? 2 Quality Score Formulas You Need to Know: Minimum Bids and Ad Position
• “My Change History” Tool Soon to Add Account Performance Charts

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 6:14 am and is filed under Advanced PPC Strategies, PPC Management Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.