Domain Quality Score For Large Site

I am trying to launch our company’s large price comparison engine using Adwords. We are a large Adwords advertiser and have lots of experience using Adwords, but I cannot figure this one out.

Up until now we have had an individual domain name per topic that we want to go into. We have small focused keyword lists, sometimes just the exact three variations of the term we want to go after. When we use individual domain names we seem to get a lot of traffic, most of our ad group’s keywords have a “Great” quality score and then the rest have “OK” or “Poor”. The landing page is OK, not much original content, but some ads, affiliate links etc.

We want to move everything to 1 domain name and build a large site around a premium domain name, but when I try sending all of the same ad groups/keywords to the same domain name, instead of the individual one like before our Quality Score plummets. Most keywords are then rated as OK and a decent amount are Poor. It takes a few days for this to happen though. Typically when I test with a new domain name we will have a “Great” Quality Score across the board for a day or two before it tanks and then traffic is basically gone. We literally receive about 1/100th of the traffic we were receiving before, yet the same ads, same keywords, same landing page etc. The only difference is we have everything going to the same domain name instead of individual domain names.

Clearly there is a domain name Quality Score that is affecting us. It seems when using individual domains names the success or failure of an individual ad group/keyword does not affect the others, but when it all goes to the same domain name it seems tied into each other.

I have tried starting off slow and only sending super high CTR topics to start and this delay’s the Quality Score hit, but eventually once I start to send thousands of ad groups to the same domain the inevitable happens and we are hit again.

How do you guys launch a large site around 1 domain name? Is this a domain name history thing and we need to build up some trust? Any help is appreciated I have spent weeks trying to figure this out.

 

I've never seen or heard of a domain level QS and my first reaction would be to say it doesn't exist. If it did anyone could just set up a few crappy campaigns pointing at competing domains and impact the QS of that domain in a negative way? My hunch is your landing page(s) need some work.

 

It cannot be the landing pages as they are the exact same for both tests.

My testing indicates there is a domain quality score as I can create 5 different ad groups all pointing to 5 different domains and get different Quality Scores even though the landing pages are identical.

I have multiple domains I have used in my testing that for some reason have been flagged as "low quality" and no matter what new ad groups I point to it they immediatly have a bad quality score, but if I point those same ad groups to a new domain name it will immediatly have a great quality score. It doesn't always last more than a few days, but a new domain name definatly resets the quality score.

 

I think it's at the page level. LP QS's are not updated that often (once a month, maybe more) so if your LP gets a poor QS you may be stuck with it until it's reevaluated. My hunch is that's why you see changes in the QS after campaigns have been live for few days.

If you know someone else with a AdWords account ask them to set up a test campaign to one of the domains you feel has been marked "poor". I've done this for people in the past to demonstrate that it was in fact not the entire domain that was flagged as poor.

Alternately, if a keyword flips over to poor let it run for another few days and see if it flips back. There is from time to time some bouncing around with new keywords and ad groups. I see it quite a bit.

 

There is in fact a domain-level quality score. There is a QS on your keywords, the ad text, the domain, and the landing page. This comes straight from our account reps at Google. And they're very, very good account reps.

And based on experience of using the same landing page on 2 different domains, yes, there is a domain QS.

If someone posts back that there isn't, they clearly do not know what they're talking about.

I hope this helps.

Also, QS is updated every 2-3 weeks. Its bots gather a general theme for your site, and if that theme doesn't match the keyword being typed in, then that will affect *part* of your quality score.

Basically, just make sure that there are no more than 20 keywords in an ad group (preferably 10), and that the keyword appears in the headline, appears in the body of the ad, appears on your landing page, and is relevant to the overall theme of the domain name.

If you are selling used cars on superwidgets.com, your QS on the domain will be Poor. If you use that same landing page on usedcars.com, your QS will be Great.

 

it depends on what you mean by domain quality score. are you talking about a 'theme' for the overall site? or an age/authority of the domain?

for example, as a test i set up an affiliate domain 2 weeks ago and within a few hours had 'great' quality scores. every article on the site is a repub of some free article site, no original content on the site except some lame landing page content i wrote it about 5 minutes. 1 link out to the affiliate program.

i attribute the high quality score to 2 things - my domain is an exact match of my main keyword, and the structure of the landing page is carefully crafted based on experience. the campaign owns this niche now...too bad the publisher doesn't convert