Why poor quality score even if I rank #1 for a medium popular keyword?

I just find it's very interesting. And I have some other keywords, which are having avg. positions like 1.2, but it shows that I need to bid even higher in order to show on first page.

I think it's very curious, any idea?

 

You can rank highly for a keyword and still appear top - it just costs more.

If there are only a few adverts, and your bid isn't enough to appear on page one, your advert will still appear some of the time (just not all of the time) and the average position will still be on page one.

Run a report to look at your impression share, and see what percentage of the time your advert is showing...

 

How do I run such a report? I cannot see those options on any of the reports I can access.

I have a lot of keywords that have bids below first page estimates that normally have page 1 impressions (as high as pos.2). A few have little competition and may fall into the situation you describe but others have plenty of sponsored results to compete against. So, I would be curious to know if my ads are only showing occasionally. It has always been my impression that the 1st page bid estimate is simply wrong most of the time - certainly, if you ever try bidding the estimate when it is only £0.02 or £0.03 your chances of appearing on page 1 for most keywords are almost zero!

More importantly though, your comments suggest that Google are setting a minimum bid irrespective of competition which would answer the question posed recently of why an advertiser with a unique keyword, i.e. no competition at all, should still have to bid high to get shown. Makes one wonder what criteria Google are using to select those keywords and set such bids? (I know from experience it is not just uniqueness or lack of competition).

 

If you run a campaign or account level report, there are tick-boxes for Impression Share and Exact IS.

Google cover it here:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=52760

Google do have a threshold bid to appear on the first page, regardless of whether other adverts are appearing. They introduced it relatively recently, and they haven't been that forthcoming with exactly how it works.

Here's what they have to say...

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=105802

 

CustardMite,
Thanks for the info. I was thinking the reports were more specific (adgroup or keyword) which is why I missed them. Very interesting and quite startling to discover how much you may be missing out on!

But, I am a little confused. Perhaps I have had a very simplistic view of ad placement assuming that a simple calculation (QSxBid) would give your ad a position (from 1 to nnn depending on the number of competing keywords). If it ranks 5th it WILL APPEAR on page 1, 12th it WILL APPEAR on page 2, if 27th on page 4, and so on assuming the searcher goes that deep. As I read it, the implication of Google's help file on Lost IS(rank)is that your ad may NOT APPEAR at all!

Or, do I misunderstand and the Lost IS(rank) is simply a case of ads not being seen because the searcher did not go deep enough? (In which case, for those ads I deliberately target page 3 or 4, I have nothing to worry about.) What is your opinion?

 

You won't always appear in the same position. Your position may be different in different regions, or at different times of day. But historically (apparently no longer) Google have tried your advert in different positions as part of its 'normalisation' process (the process by which it takes into account your position when assessing your clickthrough rate).

You may remember this:

http://searchengineland.com/what-google-adwords-really-changed-last-night-15365.php

If other adverts are being pushed above yours sometimes, you can be dropped onto page 2.

You can look at the positions that you are appearing for a keyword on Google Analytics (in the Adwords section). This may help?

 

What is the minimum bid usually cost if you have zero advertiser competition?

 

It depends on your Quality Score...

 

Thanks for your response. Lets say just an average QS score. We talking maybe 10 or 15 cents?

 

That's probably a bit low, at least for a new account.

The only way to know is to try it. If people click on your advert over time, it will fall...