The Quality Score is an assessment by Google Adwords of an individual ad triggered by a keyword which, in combination with the bid amount determines the ranking of the ad relative to competitors. A higher Quality Score of a keyword will result in:
A higher ad position within Google search results and the content network for that keyword at a given bid amount.
A lower minimum bid amount necessary for an ad to be served for the keyword that triggers it. Ads with a low Quality Score may not be displayed until a higher amount is bid.
Greater eligibility for an ad to appear on a site on the content network and potentially improved positions within competitive listings. Understanding Quality Score is difficult since Google is not completely transparent on its approach; it does refer to the main factors but it doesn‟t disclose “other relevance factors” or the relative weighting between them.
Implication 1. Clickthrough rate on the ad is given as the first factor. Higher CTR will result from more relevant ads, so this shows the importance of producing smaller, highly targeted ad groups which deliver creative with relevant ad text and offer for the search term entered. If you make extensive use of broad match for a limited range of phrases, your clickthrough rates will be lower than if you use exact or phrase match or if you use broad match on many keywords. The use of negative keywords will help increase CTR and so Quality Score.
Note that the clickthrough rate used takes into account expected clickthrough rate for a particular position since higher ad positions naturally tend to gain higher CTRs.
Implication 2. Clickthrough rate on the content network is not considered for results within Google search results page as is sometimes thought to be the case and is used as an argument against the content network.
Implication 3. You should make sure you have good Keyword relevance which is the degree of match between the keyword triggering the ad and the search term entered.
Implication 4. Ad text relevance is also important. This is degree of match between the words in the ad creative compared to the search term entered.
The importance of keyword relevance and ad text relevance in the Quality Score again shows that developing many more focused Ad Groups will give better results.
Implication 5. The historical assessment of clickthrough rate suggests the importance of removing poorly performing keywords or Ad Groups. High volume brand keywords will have an effect in increasing CTR across the account which won‟t occur if brand bidding is not used.
Implication 6. Other relevance factors. Although in this current disclosure, Google doesn‟t state that the landing page relevance is a factor, it has said this in the past and it is used for setting the permissible minimum bid amount. We can also speculate that Google could review whether ads are effective according to whether they are immediately followed by another clickor search.
