Bill Slawski has come across some patent applications from Google that look to detail how they calculate quality score. Here are some of the factors listed. - How many times a user selects a given ad in a given session. - A duration of time, from an ad result selection, until the user issues another search query. This may include time spent on other pages (reached via a search result click or ad click) subsequent to a given ad click. - A ratio of the time, from a given ad result selection until the user issues another search query, as compared to all other times from ad result selections until the user issued another search query. - Time spent, given an ad result selection, on viewing other results for the search query, but not on the given ad result. - How many searches (i.e., a unique issued search query) that occur in a given session prior to a given search result or ad selection; - How many searches that occur in a given session after a given search result or ad selection. - Rather than searches, how many result page views that occur for a given search query before a given selection. This can be computed within the query (i.e., just for a unique query), or for the entire session; - Rather than searches, how many search result page views that occur for a given search query after this selection. This can be computed within the query (i.e., just for the unique query), or for the entire session; Get his full post below. Patent Applications on Estimating, Rating, and Using Quality Scores for Google Ads
Last week Bill Slawski did a great write up about patents and various elements that could be used in relation to the Google AdWords program. The post starts; "A trio of patent applications from Google look at estimating the likelihood that an advertisement is a good one, in a method that goes beyond counting click-through-rates (CTR)." Bill does a great job outlining the factors and how they may be used in relation to AdWords. Go read it. It's good.
So they classify each click as either a 'good' or 'bad' visit. And the Quality Score is, I assume, a representation of the estimated probability of a 'good' visit, based on past data (albeit possibly transformed in some way). Some interesting things in there, most of which can only be influenced by designing a good website! Interesting ideas in there like: The amount of time that the user spends viewing your competitors websites compared to how long they spend on yours. Whether they search again.
Google knows A LOT about how users react to your site/ad in comparison to everyone else in that verticle. Not using that data in the quality score calculation would be a huge error. You don't judge the "quality" of your page/site, the users do by their actions (beyond simply clicking on your ad).
I trust Google (up to a point), but I am a little nervous if a site is considered 'better' if people spend a long time on it. One site that I manage is a single page with a button to request a brochure - it's a very simple site, designed to get people to buy things offline, but if it's going to be compared to online retail sites with complicated navigation, won't it be penalised?
Agreed. In a vacume time on site is poor inidcator of quality. I have a few sites that if the user was spending more than 10 secondf on the page(s) it's becuase I did a bad job and they are not getting what they want. I would think time on page/site has value when looked at in conjuction with other elements and across a large, large data set.
Also, the people who are having QS issues shoujld go give this a read. I see it all the time, "my content is great but google says my QS is poor". Perhaps it's not Google saying your QS is poor, it's the users of your site indicating they think it's poor quality based on their actions.