Answer = Yes.
I have looked at numerous accounts this week and am so surprised to see keywords that just don’t belong in their accounts, with a poor Quality Score (QS) and horribly low Click Through Rate (CTR). Not only does this drag their accounts down, it also wreaks havoc on the keywords’ CTR performance for every advertiser that should be using the keyword.
For instance, I recently looked at an account for a personal trainer. The account held keywords like ‘beach’, ‘weight watchers’, ‘excercise equipment’, none of which he offers, but are somewhat related. Of course you want a good body to go to the beach; “weight watchers” is another option to a personal trainer and when you visit this personal trainer you will use excercise equipment. Now, all of these keywords have a poor quality score and terrible CTR, and of course they should! This account has been running these keywords for months accruing a terrible historical CTR. Eventually this account may grind to a complete halt due to these keywords’ low CTR alone. Before that happens though, he will damage these keywords for other advertisers who do sell ‘excercise equipment’. This is why Google considers quality score important. A poor quality score is a deterrent. An indicator that something is wrong, that perhaps the keyword should be seriously re-evaluated and possibly removed all together. Google want’s you to stay relevant. It is the building block of adwords. It keeps things in check. It also keeps advertisers happy and ultimately keeps the end users of Google happy when they are provided with search results that are relevant to their query. If I wanted to find a weight watchers meeting in my area I would not expect to see ‘personal trainers’ in the search results. If Google can not keep their end users happy by presenting them with relevant search results then people will stop using Google and the end result will be the advertisers using AdWords not reaching the largest audience available on the internet.
How this effects you.
When an advertisers sets up an account and selects their keywords they receive an initial quality score based on the historical performance of the keyword on the AdWords system. Advertisers that have misused keywords have lowered that historical performance for other advertisers.
Can You Fix it?
Yes, If you find a newly added keyword that is truly relevant to your product or service has a poor score work on the CTR. Once you add a keyword to your account you can increase it’s quality if it is relevant to your ad text and landing page and achieves a good CTR. It make take time to accrue positive CTR history.
Notes:
- Don’t use keywords that are not directly related to your product or service.
- If you see a Poor Quaity Score or very low CTR (aside from the content network) something is wrong and needs to be addressed immediately.
- Don’t freak outwhen you see a low Quality Score on a keyword that you know is very relevant, it is just that the keyword did not get a good performance history on the system, likely due to other advertisers misusing the keyword. If you are getting a good CTR with the keyword it’s Quality Score will improve.
 Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer Clinks Web Service a Google AdWords Partner Company Subscribe: RSS Feeds | Follow me on Twitter |
Kim this is a great post. For some reason (most of which may be poor communication on our part) advertisers totally miss the ‘Account Quality Score’ component and I think the first part of this post does a great job getting at this.
Thanks Sarah. I hope it got the point across. I am so happy (and honored)that you came to visit us!
AdWordsProSarah , are you saying that having low quality keywords in one campaign will affect other campaigns (with different keywords) in my account. Is there such a thing as an “Account Quality Score”?
“Is there such a thing as an “Account Quality Score”?”
Yes, there is, though you will not see it displayed anywhere in your AdWords account… It is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
Thanks for this post, makes things somewhat clearer. However, regarding this
How are we supposed to get a better CTR if it won’t show on the network due to a poor QS, it appears to be a vicious circle. I have a new campaign that is super targetted but I’m getting QS’s of 1 and 2.
Should we pause keywords in other campaigns that aren’t generating clicks to increase CTR overall?
@Cherie – focus on the exact match. If you can’t make the exact match CTR come up, the offer is wrong for the intent behind the search. e.g. If the exact match is “new york flight” you might assume that they want a flight *to* New York. They may want a flight *from* New York – then the advert copy would dissuade people, not persuade them.
Understand the *searchers* intent. Just because *you* think the offer is a match, doesn’t mean that *searchers* think it is a match. It’s a “Theory Of Mind” exercise – you have to look at this like a searcher, not an advertiser, to understand what the searcher wants to achieve.