I was working on optimizing a campaign today and noticed that loosening match type (e.g. going from phrase match to broad match or modified broad match to regular broad match) increased the quality score of my keywords. I thought quality score was unaffected by match type but even if it is, why does having a less strict match type increase my quality score from 3-4 to about 6-7 on most of these keywords? Thanks in advance for any help!
Google treats the same keyword in different match types the same. They should all have the same QS. So if you have wooden widget "wooden widget" [wooden widget] in the same ad group, they will all have the same QS. Therefore, what you observe must be from something else.
Lucid, thank you for your reply. Yes, this is exactly how I thought it worked but I can verify that the only thing to change was the match type, which is why I'm so confused by this. Its possible (though extremely unlikely) that my client changed their landing page recently, which I suppose could increase quality score. That would also mean that an recent page change that resulted in a 2-3 pt increase in QS across many keywords wasn't picked up by Adwords until I changed the match type (maybe making Google recalculate or something). Despite how unlikely that all sounds, is it even possible?