When Is It OK to Have Low-Quality-Score Keywords?

If you have a Google AdWords account, you likely know the role Quality Score plays in the success of your account.

Generally speaking, the higher your keywords’ Quality Scores, the more Google will like you. And the more Google likes you, the less it’ll charge you for your ads to appear in strong positions in the SERPs.

But there a few instances when low-Quality-Score keywords might actually be a good thing. Here are three situations when it’s OK to have low-Quality Score keywords:

The keywords are bringing you a high return on investment.

Your keywords’ Quality Scores may be below 4 or 5 (on a scale of 1 to 10), but if their associated ad is achieving a large net profit, you might want to tolerate those low Quality Score keywords. While your ad might be a little lower in the search results than you’d like, you are making good money.

One possible explanation for your situation is that you have a low click-through rate, but a high conversion rate. Not a ton of people are clicking on your ad, but those who are are buying your product or registering for your free download. That must mean your ad copy is highly relevant to your offering.

The keywords are valuable for branding.

Maybe you’ve surveyed customers to see what keywords they think best describe your product or service. But for some reason, some of those keywords have low Quality Scores in your advertising campaign. You may not want to remove those keywords if you feel they are serving a significant branding purpose.

Even though your click-through rates might be low, at least your ads are informing viewers about what you offer. And maybe those people are coming back at a later time to convert.

One way to measure whether or not people are coming back is by looking at your view-through conversion statistics in your AdWords account. Your view-through conversion rate, for example, tells you the percentage of users who viewed an ad and neglected to click on it, but within 30 days went to the ad’s associated landing page and undertook the desired action.

You are just starting an AdWords campaign.

If you are just starting an AdWords campaign, it’s understandable that you have low-Quality-Score keywords. You are still learning about optimizing ads and landing pages, and have yet to put all your knowledge into practice. While some people might wish all their keywords had high Quality Scores from the start, others might see the benefit of not having a perfect campaign right away.

Not having perfect Quality Scores initially means you will develop the good habit of doing your research and tweaking your campaign. If Google ever changes its Quality Score formula, or if you decide to advertise with another search engine, you will be well positioned to handle these changes. You will seek out information, and improve your campaign. But if you are used to having perfect Quality Scores that don’t require any effort, you will have a tough time adapting to new Quality Score rules.

About the Author

Christine Laubenstein is a Marketing Associate at WordStream, a provider of an advanced pay-per-click tool suite, designed to improve the performance of pay-per-click keywords in your AdWords campaign.

http://theppcblog.com Matthew Umbro

Hi Christine,

Good insight here. I wrote a similar article on the same topic a couple of weeks ago called “Competing in a Quality Score World:”

http://theppcblog.com/2010/08/competing-in-a-quality-score-world/

My premise is that niche keywords are sometimes penalized with poor quality scores. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
http://www.seowebjunction.com Jun

Hi Christine. I agree most with point #1. ROI is what matters most.
Kim Painley

Excellent point…I have seen this happen for isolated keywords in several client accounts. If the “poor quality” words are in the same ad group with words with higher scores, I isolate the “poor quality” words into their own ad group so I can test alternative ad text separately for the two groups.
http://www.clickequations.com Craig Danuloff

I don’t think the overall message of this post is quite right. I can agree with some of the ideas behind it, but broadly it seems like ‘aircover’ to justify poor quality scores when in reality (in my experience and research) there is really very little valid reason to do so.

Quality score is a rating that tells you how well you’ve done in the past, and how well you’re expected to do in the future, on that keyword (and to some degree in the entire account). If that’s true – and it generally is – there is little excuse for thinking bad grades are ok.

Your first point is the most valid. In some cases – high ticket, long cycle, b2b purchases come to mind – you could have a terrific ROI on a terrible QS keyword. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find 10 more precise keywords (via query mining) and exact match them to get the same ROI from better quality score. In other words, it doesn’t mean it’s the only path to those clicks. If it really is, then yes it’s worth keeping the keyword. It should probably but pushed into another account, but that’s another story.

I think the branding argument is spurious. Unclicked text ads drive branding that results in later revenue? Love to see that research.

And new campaigns, when built properly, shouldn’t have many low QS keywords or have them for long. When you’re building a new account you’re creating a new reputation. Why mark yourself as a loser from the start? That stench will follow you your whole lifetime. Better to add keywords slowly, from your most promising on out, only expanding when the batch before has earned 7 or better – which shouldn’t take long and will only get quicker as the good account grows.

As I’ve studied quality score for the past few years I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that it’s even more important than any of us give it credit for, both in impact but moreover as a signal of where we have work to do or when we have to realize that every keyword is not for every account.

Certainly a topic worth the additional attention your article brings to it.
- David
  
  Craig, in regards to branding I think you may not be giving enough credit here.
  
  Although it’s not a scientific study, we frequently run branding campaigns in content, which receive very low CTR (compared to our DR campaigns on the content network). However, we are receiving hundreds of thousands of impressions.
  
  Yet, we had an “accidental” experiment by Google where all the sudden we stopped showing on the placement we had running for the branded campaign for almost a month. During that time we saw a drop of about 10% in branded search volume.
  
  It could have been coincidence, but once Google figured out what the problem was and we started showing on our placements again our search volume went back up.
  
  Granted, it was two different time periods, but it just happened (and was unfortunate) that we stopped showing during what is typically the month with our client’s highest branded search volume.
http://www.clickequations.com Craig Danuloff

Two additional points I should have made above.

First, we have to define ‘low’ quality score. 6 or maybe 5 is a low quality score. 4 is a toxic quality score. Big difference in how you should react.

Second, your broader point – that there are business interests that may override quality score – is a one I completely agree with. While one shouldn’t look at QS and make decisions without considering other implications, one shouldn’t consider other goals and ignore quality score (or any other factor) either.

To make the best decision, gather the most complete information possible and then decide. I think you were making that point and my previous comment didn’t sound like it acknowledged the bigger picture.
http://www.nike-air.org Jordan

if you decide to advertise with another search engine, you will be well positioned to handle these changes.
Grant Perry

I agree low QS keywords can still be highly valuable.

Another thing worth noting is that QS won’t affect your keywords used on the content (sorry, display) network. Another reason to always have separate campaigns for search and content.
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When Is It OK to Have Low-Quality-Score Keywords?

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