Adwords Quality Score Penalty?

**acrleyton** · 22-09-10

I have an Adwords campaign that has been running fine for two years, a quality score of 10 on most keywords, ads in position 1 or 2 etc etc.

However, a month or so ago Google just stopped displaying the ads and looking at my account the quality score had dropped on a keyphrases from 10 to 1! I haven't changed any of the ads and the only site change has been to nofollow the affiliate links. I would have thought this would have a positive effect (it has on other sites) rather than a negative one.

I was just wondering if anyone else has seen anything similar? I thought it was just me, but I spoke to someone at the network this morning (about something unrelated) and apparently two other affiliates have noticed the same thing in the same market (photo printing offers).

**roshanb** · 22-09-10

Hi,
The same thing seems to have happened to one of my sports campaigns just over a week ago and I've only found out today when I was going to add something to it.
I've had this campaign running for a couple of years as well and it's funny you should say that you added nofollow to your affiliate links because I that's one of two changes I made. This was a couple of months ago now tho. I might try removing the nofollow tags and creating a new campaign.

Rosh

**acrleyton** · 23-09-10

Thanks for your reply Rosh.

Interesting that you've experienced a similar thing too. I may also try removing the nofollow tags and start a new campaign and see what happens.

Adam

**Northside** · 23-09-10

Yes I have had my photo printing ads stopped (I spoke to an account manager on Wednesday so this may be what was being referred to). Attempts to shift to different domains have also been blocked and account now suspended.

All very frustrating considering
- my site users were quite happy as they were getting a market comparison service and regularly placed orders
- I was making a steady profit
- google were getting a few thousands of pounds of income in the year!

I just did a search for free photo printing which brings up an ad for Ask.com which simply takes you to their search engine page - nothing useful there for the user experience and yet Google tolerate this whilst picking off small businesses.

I am afraid Google have a monopoly and are becoming increasingly ruthless in exploiting their position.

Rant over.

**acrleyton** · 24-09-10

Yes, very frustrating! Like you say, if users are happy then why have Google got a problem.

Had you done any nofollowing of affiliate links too?

I was thinking about moving to a different domain too, but I don't think I'll chance it now!