The next time you check your Google AdWords account, look for the new Quality Score column (or an option to activate it). The new column was scheduled to appear next week, but it may be released earlier. Google has been letting people know this is coming, but the information they provide is still vague, in my opinion.
You may have received a letter from Google outlining the new quality score criteria. It explains that they are trying to improve the quality of ads served to users by making improvements to the way the Quality Score is evaluated. (The Quality Score is important because it is used to set the minimum bids for keywords.) This new system will apparently give the advertiser the benefit of the doubt when the AdWords system does not have enough data to set the minimum.
According to Google, this is a good thing for advertisers – well, for some advertisers. They are expecting complaints from advertisers that see an increase in their keyword bids (and it looks like a fairly large number of keywords will be affected). But, they state that some keyword minimums will actually decrease. (These would be the ones that are new in the system, and will most likely go up when more information is received about the performance of the keyword.)
Google’s advice to advertisers is “Please keep in mind that you should always bid the value of your keyword to you - if your keyword becomes inactive for search, consider optimizing or deleting that keyword before raising your bid”
How’s that for words of wisdom!
The good thing is that advertisers will now be able to see their Quality score, where it was invisible before.
ClickZ News talked to Nicholas Fox, senior business product manager for ad quality and here’s the explanation received:
This is a change to the algorithm itself, updating what we call ‘prediction confidence’ to improve the accuracy in determining quality score in cases where we have less data,” Fox said. In effect, Google is becoming more lenient with ads that it knows nothing about, but could become stricter with ads once it has gathered some data.”
They also stated that it was the advertisers who asked for more transparency. I don’t remember begging Google for more changes, but I guess I’ll wait and see what the numbers show. . .