This post is from 2008. Products, prices and links in it may be out of date.
I didn't bother posting this earlier because I thought everyone had received a copy from Google. Apparently not everyone got this in the mail last week. So for those who didn't get the Google Newsletter, here is a recap on one of the sections regarding Quality Score by Fred Valleys, Google's AdWords Evangelist. (Please note this might not be something new to many users but it is here to help those who didn't know. Also note I had to retype this by hand since it was snail mailed so please excuse any typos).
Many advertisers want to know more about the AdWords Quality Score. This isn't surprising, considering that it's a factor in determining both the ad rank and minimum cost-per-click bid for keywords. Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It's calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query.
To start off, it's useful to understand why Google factors relevance into the rank of an ad. To align incentives and foster a healthy and sustainable advertising system, we had to develop a system where users continue to look to ads for relevant information, advertisers continue to find high quality leads, and site publishers continue to monetize high quality content. Because the system rewards relevant ads, users can find exactly what they want and are more likely to do business with you, our advertisers. Next time they are looking for something, they will probably consider clicking on an ad again, giving you another chance to get their business.
There are five major components that go into the Quality Score that determines the minimum cost-per-click bid: ad relevance, keyword relevance, account performance, landing page quality, and landing page load time. Since Google doesn't have any preconceived notion of what makes a good ad, we let our users vote with their clicks. By looking at the historical clickthrough rate (CTR), we can tell when users found ads relevant, and this democratic process helps us set the Quality Score of the keyword. The very first minimum bid for a keyword in your account (before any CTR information is accrued) is determined by how other advertisers have performed for this keyword. By combining this baseline historical data with information from your account, such as historical account performance and the CTR of your other ads, we set a starting minimum bid. As soon as you start accruing your own CTR data for the keyword, we will adjust your minimum bid to reflect your performance.
As soon as you link a new landing page to your ads, we will begin evaluating this page on a regular basis for its quality and load time. If we notice that our users are not finding what they expected on the landing page, we will raise the minimum cost-per-click bid for those keywords and landing pages. We also recently announced that page load times will factor into Quality Score because we believe that users want to get to your site as quickly as possible and excessively long page load times are detrimental to the user experience.
I hope this brief glimpse into the Quality Score helps you create more relevant ads. For more on Quality Score, including how to view it in your account, please visit: http://www.google.com/aw/qs
A quick recap, these are the five components Google AdWords base your Quality Score on:
- Ad Relevance
- Keyword Relevance
- Account Performance
- Landing Page Quality
- Landing Page Load Time
Please note that these are probably not the only ways they calculate your Quality Score and minimum bids but coming directly from Google, these are surely huge factors you should consider if you didn't already know this or may have neglected.