Google quality score?

[tbp]

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There is evidence that the quality score applies to the whole site, not just the landing page. It applies to things like keyword usage, and making sure that the landing page an site is relevant to the advert.

However, logic doesn't apply a lot of the time. My main campaign was shut down last night, with the quality score going from great to poor suddenly, even though it's be fine for the last 5 months, and the site is extremely relevant and at number 1 in google.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Neglible weight seems to be added to landing page and too much attributed to the display url for some recognised sites. Try opening half a dozen new accounts , borrow old ones of your own or colleagues to ascertain the russian roulette effect. Then in each run the same adgroup. Then bid on your own brands & try out display & destination urls for totally different companies where there is no relevancy.

example test urls could be www. google.co.uk ... www. ebay.co.uk ... www. wikipedia.org... but the best of all is use urls that don t actually exist, that one has my spleen wobbling.

[bazza99]

I agree with the comment above suggesting that QS definitely has a site-wide aspect.

My own take on it is that when you create a new ad on a brand new site, a QS is assigned automatically to each keyword that you add. This is typically done within 24 hours from what I've seen.

That initial QS will largely be based on similar factors to those that we would recognise as being important in SEO (eg title tag, heading1, bold keywords, keyword density). In effect, this initial QS looks at on-page factors and decides whether your QS is "Good", "OK" or "Poor".

After this initial stage, there is then a manual check carried out on the site. This might happen within 24 hours, or might be seen 2 weeks later.

This could have a dramatic impact on your QS. In essence, the manual check seems to be an attempt to identify "poor quality" sites (ie those that are thin on content and often big on affiliate links). If you're hit by the manual check, then you'll know about it pretty quickly - expect to see most QS revert to "poor" for keywords pointing to that website, with the min CPC rising, often to £2.50 (or some similarly large figure).

How do you avoid getting your site rated as "poor"? I'd suggest that there are a number of steps that you could take, including:

• Making sure that your entire site isn't simply redirecting all visitors to a single merchant
• Ensuring that your site adds value (eg contains reviews or detailed product information)
• Making sure that you have a Privacy Policy, with a link to it displayed on every page
• Providing contact details - a postal address or phone number adds more substance

Then, with a bit of luck, you may end up with a decent QS.

[tbp]

After this initial stage, there is then a manual check carried out on the site.

The latest slap is definately not a manual check, far too many campaigns have been wiped out in the course of 12 hours for it to be done manually.

[bazza99]

I'll have to take your word for that - I haven't seen any of our PPC sites hit in quite a while, but I've been altering the way in which we produce sites to achieve that.

One thing's for sure - Google doesn't much like many affiliate sites, so we're all having to keep moving pretty quickly if we want to stay ahead of the game

[nim-b]

What about direct-to-merchant PPC? Using the correct display url?

Do you think Google in any way penalises affiliates for redirecting through an affiliate network?

Also, someone suggested to me recently that if two accounts were bidding for the same keyword, both with identical urls and landing pages (ie an affiliate and a merchant), this would reduce the QS of both adverts. I realise that only one advert is allowed to appear, and having both trying would increase bid amounts, but this surprised me.

[bazza99]

Personally, I haven't seen any evidence of direct to merchant being penalised when via an affiliate link.

Similarly, haven't seen any impact on QS from two people bidding on the same URL going to the same landing page.

[aotagain]

Just in general, but have been running PPC for some time and provided that the adgroup has a reasonable track record, varying the landing page itself around a theme seems to make very little difference to the advert's position / cost per click. I believe that if you keep in the Google guidelines for the landing page (which is actually just a description of a reasonable overall site within which the landing page resides), then the quality of the landing page per se isn't that important, beyond having the right title and a few relevant headings.

We've found its quite important to have the important main site links on the landing page, even if small and near the bottom. eg. About us, Contact etc. ie. the ones that make it a real site.

So no good sending people looking for iPods to a mobile phone page and hoping to get a few sales

The difficult bit is getting the track record in the first place - writing interesting copy for the ad. in 3 lines and getting the bidding right.

Unfortunately very few peeps will give away those 'secrets'.

[leveldisc]

What about direct-to-merchant PPC? Using the correct display url?

Do you think Google in any way penalises affiliates for redirecting through an affiliate network?

I would be surprised. Afterall, many campaigns have tracking urls that could be interpreted as affiliate links, but are just simply used for tracking.

Also, someone suggested to me recently that if two accounts were bidding for the same keyword, both with identical urls and landing pages (ie an affiliate and a merchant), this would reduce the QS of both adverts. I realise that only one advert is allowed to appear, and having both trying would increase bid amounts, but this surprised me.

Again, I'd be surprised. It implies that anyone could influence someone elses quality score, by simply bidding on the same url, but deliberately bidding less. This opens a whole can of worms...