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Avoid the AdWords Quality Score Slap: How to Make Common Changes to Your Account Without Damaging Your Quality ScorePosted by Joe on August 8, 2008 in Google AdWords, Google AdWords Quality Score |
This week we’ve been dissecting the Google AdWords Quality Score. Each day we have been pulling back the layers of the ever-expanding Quality Score. Hopefully, all of the information we’ve been providing has been helpful and will allow you enhance your campaign’s performance. However, be cautious because as you optimize your account in order to improve your AdWords Quality Score, you may very well injure and hinder your Quality Score inadvertently.
There are two important elements of your account that are actually quite fragile when it comes to your Quality Score: keywords and ad texts. First, lets discuss how to make common keyword changes without negatively your Quality Score.
The PPC Hero Team is all about optimizing ad groups for higher relevancy and increased click-through rates. In order to do this you will need to re-arrange your keywords into to tight-knit ad groups and this will mean moving your keywords. Moving your keywords can effect your AdWords Quality Score, and here is how Google can view these changes:
- A keyword’s Quality Score is influenced by its relevance to the ads in its ad group. If you move a keyword to an ad group with more relevant ads, therefore, its Quality Score may improve. Similarly, the Quality Score may decrease if the ads are less relevant.
- In addition, moving a keyword to an ad group with more relevant ads can improve a keyword’s click-through rate going forward. This, over time, will improve its Quality Score.
- Landing page quality is another Quality Score factor. Moving a keyword to an ad group with a different landing page can therefore change its Quality Score.
When moving keywords in the past, we’ve seen some seriously negative affects within our accounts. Basically, we have restructured accounts in the past (to make them better!) and our performance has tanked. After a few weeks we have gotten every campaign back on track, but here a few tactics we’ve learned to employ when moving keywords:
Don’t move all of your keywords at the same time. The AdWords system may take up to a few weeks to reassess the keyword’s Quality Score in the context of the ads and landing page in its new ad group. During this time you may see stronger fluctuations in Quality Score than usual, as the system processes the new information. We have found optimizing 1-2 campaigns at a time can help mitigate these negative effects.
Move your ad texts with your keywords. Your ad texts and keywords have a symbiotic relationship. This means they are dependent on each other. If you move keywords out of one ad group into another, copy the existing ad text into your new ad group as well. This is because those keywords have already established a relationship with those ads (in the eyes of Google). If you sever this bond, your keywords are basically starting from zero.
Editing your ad texts, which is an everyday aspect of campaign management, can also seriously impact your AdWords Quality Score.
The AdWords system treats an edited ad like it’s brand new and has no performance history. And remember, ad position is partly determined by an ad’s relevance to the search query as well as its historical performance on Google. Editing your ad, therefore, can affect its position.
To mitigate any negative impacts of ad text editing, here are a few tips:
Never deleted all of your ads. You need to continually test against your best performing ads. This way you are optimizing for the best click-through rate while maintaining your Quality Score.
Insert new ads, don’t just edit old ads. When you are ready to insert a new ad, don’t just edit an older ad and re-set the performance history to zero. Pause the old under-performing ads and insert new ads. This way your not setting all of your ads’ history back to zero.
Optimizing your account and improving your Google AdWords Quality Score takes time and effort, and we just want to make sure that you’re not hindering your account when you’re actually trying to help. Following some of these tips will help mitigate some of the growing pains.
- Our Greatest Hits for August!
- Dissecting the Google AdWords Quality Score: See How it Actually Affects Your Account
- How to Make Large Changes without Negatively Affecting Your AdWords Quality Score
- How Does Moving a Keyword Effect Your Quality Score in Google AdWords?
- Give Us Your Two Cents on the Google AdWords Quality Score
August 8th, 2008 at 10:47 am
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August 8th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
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August 10th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Hey guys,
Have a question.
Might not be the best place to ask, but will try. Hoping it will inspire a post.
Want to know, how can I set a campaign specifically to target Gmail. Gmail is giving up the goods. Like mass conversion central.
So should I just leave it as part of my content bids, or should I set something up to target it specifically?
This question has been on my mind for ages
August 11th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Greetings Asia SEO Guru:
To specifically target Gmail you will need to utilize the content network. Within the updated AdWords interface you can target sites directly within your ad groups. Or you can set up a specific campaign that has only the content network activated and target solely Gmail. That would be the best way to do this.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Avoid the AdWords Quality Score Slap: How to Make Common Changes to Your Account Without Damaging Your Quality Score…
Avoid the AdWords Quality Score Slap: How to Make Common Changes to Your Account Without Damaging Your Quality Score…
March 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Joe,
You raise an issue that I have been wondering about: what is the impact difference on your quality score and your account overall of pausing an ad versus deleting it, if there is one. What about pausing versus deleting keywords, ad groups, or campaigns.
There are often times I leave a low performing ad or keyword on pause rather than deleting it because it’s easier to compare the data in my account. It’s sort of like having a recently deleted category compared to ads I deleted a long time ago.
Am I hurting my account by leaving lower performers (keywords, ads, ad groups, campaigns) on pause rather than deleting them?
Thanks.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:19 am
@ Tribal: Good question. No, you are not hurting your Quality Score by leaving under performed elements of your accounts paused. Since your account history is important to maintain, you should leave those paused keywords & ad texts in the account. You may not have to leave every single ad text in each group forever. But I wouldn’t outright delete ad texts that are under performing.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Joe,
Thanks very much for the great information; these questions are hard to find answers to anywhere else.
I want to ask for advice on reducing the Google Slap when making large scale changes to the Destination URL across many campaigns in the same account.
In our online store software, the Destination URL of the product categories is created by mandatory default using the top-level product category names. So when we change a product category name, the Destination URL must change also to using that new category name. We try not to change these nine top-level category names too often or change too much at once, but sometimes reorganizing our store is necessary as we add new product lines.
In some cases, one-third of our text ads include the same top-level category name as part of the Destination URL. So, when we change the category name, we will need to change the Destination URL in one-third of our ads in our account all at once. Many campaigns will have all their ads changed all at the same time.
What are the best ways to protect our Quality Scores when having to make Destination URL changes across so many ads at the same time.
Thanks.