Google AdWords Algorithm Update and Your Quality Score
About a month ago, Google announced the global roll-out of an update to the AdWords algorithm that increases the value of landing page relevancy and quality when determining Quality Score. Google predicted with these changes, some campaigns would see variations in keyword Quality Scores and ad positions, but most would not see a significant change in overall performance. At Marin, we decided to investigate.
We sampled a population of 240 accounts across our Marin Enterprise client base that had limited average bid movements, consistent keyword counts, and consistently received greater than 1,000 impressions per day. For these 240 accounts, we examined the daily impression-weighted Quality Score at the publisher account level.
From the sample accounts, we observed 12 accounts with an increase in Quality Score greater than 0.25.
When taking a closer look at two of these accounts, we see the spike in Quality Score occurred on 10/2/2011 – 10/4/2011. Furthermore, there was little change to Click-Through Rates during this time, which suggests that the increase in Quality Score was related to the quality of their landing page.
We also identified 15 accounts that had a week-over-week drop in Quality Score of 0.25 or more.
After further investigation into four of these accounts, we see the drop in Quality Score took place between 10/2/2011 – 10/4/2011, with minimal change in Click-Through Rates, indicating these accounts had landing pages that Google deemed to be less relevant, adversely impacting quality.
What our investigation and findings suggest:
- The updated AdWords algorithm has had limited impact on Quality Scores.
- Only about 11.25% of Google Accounts saw their Quality Score change by more than 0.25 as a result of the algorithm change.
- If you did see a decrease in Quality Score during the 10/2/2011 – 10/4/2011 timeframe, with little or no change to Click-Through Rates, consider improving your landing pages to account for this change in Google’s algorithm.
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Tags: adwords, analysis, google, Quality Score
Hi,
How would you recommend plotting/measuring the QS of one’s accounts? As far as I am aware this is only available at the keyword level and not available to view retrospectively as a function of time?
Thanks,
Paul
Currently QS is not available as a reportable metric as a function of time at Google; the above analysis would require reports to be pulled daily to allow for the retrospective analysis. As QS impacts AdRank directly, looking for any significant position shifts around the same period could be a suitable proxy – provided the Search Bid (as well as account structure and several other factors) has stayed relatively constant in that time-frame. The vast majority of accounts were unaffected – if a change in performance has been observed over the same time-frame and nothing else has changed in the account, then check the landing pages are appropriate and relevant to the keywords and creatives.
[...] Google vermeldde dat de invloed van de update beperkt ging blijven, nam Marketing Insights toch de proef op de som. Voor hun onderzoek analyseerden ze maar liefst 240 verschillende accounts. [...]
I have mobile ads running where there is just a click to call phone #. The quality score on a lot of the keywords has dropped to 3 from 4-6