Quality score gone!

**kickflip** · 03-07-09

Just had a look at my adwords account as clicks have been well down the last couple of days and all my ads quality scores are 1 out of 10!

The ads go to a price comparison landing page and are campaigns that have been running happily since before Xmas all with quality scores 7/10 or better now all of a sudden 1/10.

Anyone else been affected the last couple of days? or have I been slapped for something?

**JAmieF** · 06-07-09

Hey Kiddaclo,

Sorry to hear about the drop in quality score it does suck. By the sounds of things it does sound like that your click through rate did contribute to the drop.

It is a great opportunity to review your campaigns by checking keywords used, Ad copy and landing pages used and making the required changes.

good luck.

**kickflip** · 06-07-09

They have dropped every campaign to 1/10 that I'm sending to that site so I guess I have been slapped because they don't like my landing pages/site for some reason.

Moved my site to a new domain name and hey presto 10/10 quality score again! Not sure how long it will last though.

**bapages** · 26-07-09

How did you get on with this?

**kickflip** · 26-07-09

Quality score is still ok on the new domain:tup

**bapages** · 26-07-09

Does it still look down on the old one?

**kickflip** · 26-07-09

I haven't used the old domain since but I'll enable a old campaign and let you know later on if you want.

**bapages** · 26-07-09

Much appreciated as the same has happened here this weekend.

**jonsp** · 26-07-09

Originally Posted by bapages

Much appreciated as the same has happened here this weekend.

There have been a lot of articles describing this over the last week or so. It seems Google have come up with an algo that looks for price comparison/review landing pages with unmasked affiliate links - ie direct to the network - and when it finds them decimates the quality score obviously making the campaign un-viable. So far sites that link thru redirects, as mine all do, seem to be unaffected. Anybody's guess how long that will last though. I've heard other people say that changing the domain works in the short term but only until Google runs the same algo on the new domain.

There's a risk that when Google detects activity like this that it sees as deliberate attempts to get round it's rules it starts sending our emails making noises about banning accounts. I've had a couple of them and they do tend to focus the mind :scared

Cheers,
Jon

**kickflip** · 26-07-09

It's a right pain when everything is ticking along nicely and this happens. I just copied everything over to a new domain and changed the destination url's in the ads and the quality score came back up.

I have enabled a old campaign on the old domain and it has just gone from 'pending review' to 'approved' and the quality score is back to how it was originally 7-10/10.

Unfortunately just checked again and all keywords are now 1/10 :td

I guess once they have flaged the domain as no added value that's it, which is a shame as mine is a domain I would really like to use again for PPC. It's a price comparison site.

**kickflip** · 26-07-09

There have been a lot of articles describing this over the last week or so. It seems Google have come up with an algo that looks for price comparison/review landing pages with unmasked affiliate links - ie direct to the network - and when it finds them decimates the quality score obviously making the campaign un-viable. So far sites that link thru redirects, as mine all do, seem to be unaffected. Anybody's guess how long that will last though. I've heard other people say that changing the domain works in the short term but only until Google runs the same algo on the new domain.

There's a risk that when Google detects activity like this that it sees as deliberate attempts to get round it's rules it starts sending our emails making noises about banning accounts. I've had a couple of them and they do tend to focus the mind

Cheers,
Jon

Cheers for that Jon, I'm now off to mask all the links on the new Url something I always meant to do but didn't get around to!

**kickflip** · 26-07-09

There's a risk that when Google detects activity like this that it sees as deliberate attempts to get round it's rules it starts sending our emails making noises about banning accounts. I've had a couple of them and they do tend to focus the mind

Jon did you get the emails for masking the links, or swapping sites about?

**jonsp** · 27-07-09

Originally Posted by kiddaclo

Jon did you get the emails for masking the links, or swapping sites about?

Not going into details but it wasn't for masking links. I'd be surprised if anyone got penalised for masking links - it's a perfectly legitimate technique.

**kickflip** · 27-07-09

Thanks for that.

**tijan** · 28-07-09

Masking links doesnt stop your QS jaw dropping from 10/10 to 1/10. I have more than 20 masked links sites n with adwords on n doing great. CTR was great. Conversions-Beautiful but in the end the QS dropped to 1/10. Been reading literatures for more than 4 weeks but not a single person seems to know whats going on. Googles own financial report will sometimes be badly hit by their actions as 8 of 10 doing PPC are suffering from this syndrome. Micro site/mini site or even website with 000 of pages.

Thats one of the big disadvantages when 1 company is running a near monopolistic business.

Share your thought if you were able to revert your 1/10 to at least 5/10 without moving domains