This new QS makes me sick now. I had all keywords in ad group rated as GREAT, before the new QS thing came in. It was great for a few days and then suddenly i noticed they are now QS=5 OK from QS=8 Great. I did change a bit of page but that shouldn't have any impact whatsoever. Any suggestions?
OP, Count yourself lucky, one of my most important keywords just dropped from QS8 to QS4 (poor)! I would not say the new system made me sick. In fact, I was very happy with the way it started out, but now I am at a complete loss to understand just how it is calculating the QS. That is basically why I am here today; does anyone understand what is going on? To expand a little. I have a website selling silver jewellery. That phrase, "silver jewellery" appears all over the site, in the site and business name, in meta tags, alt tags, title tags, urls, etc. etc. you name it! As you might expect it is a fairly important keyword for my ad campaign and it appears in the text ads and the landing page url. Over the weekend it dropped from QS8 to QS4! Absolutely nothing was changed in the ad campaign! As further evidence of the impenetrability of the QS system it is curious that in general keyword phrases based on the spelling "jewelry" have higher QS than those spelled "jewellery" despite the fact that the first spelling only appears sparsely on the site (perhaps 1:10 compared to the "English" spelling). MY own feeling is that the QS is unduly heavily influenced by your bid such that if you do not bid for page one you get penalized. (It is not something I have checked since I am not prepared to pay the going rate and, anyway, I do not actually want to appear on the first page for many terms.) The interesting thing in this regard is that it appears to be the case whether you are appearing on page one or not. For example, I have another keyword that gets a good CTR and appears with average position about 2.8. I bid 0.15GBP although Goog says I need to bid 2.00GBP for page 1. The QS dropped from 5 to 2 about 3 days ago. Curiously, though, it has not made any difference to the number of impressions or position despite the fact the QS box now tells me the keyword is 'not triggering any ads'. Mystifying! Any thoughts?
I think it is just Google testing out different things, although you need to be careful not to go overboard: I think the new point system is just a step closer to aligning langing page optimisation with SEO. Am abnormally high keyword density can have negative affects on your organic listings (SEO) and it could also lead to a negative impact on your QS (non-SEO).
bjwelled, noticed the same thing. My keyword group is tightly related and not skewed, the landing page is absolutely relevant but QS poor why coz i am paying 10 cents per click? i was earlier bidding $2++ then my QS was great now when i reduced my bids adwords dont like me anymore? Crazy
Trishan, I agree it could be Google tinkering with the algo. Hard to imagine what else could be causing the movements I am seeing. I am also getting this message appearing regularly on the keyword analysis page despite not changing anything at all, "Due to a recent change to your CPC bid, we are currently updating your information." (BTW, don't think I have gone overboard, just using a bit of hyperbole trying to convey the relevance and importance of a term that does appear on almost every page of the site.) Godmode, Interesting and would seem to back my theory but the evidence of just us two is hardly enough to build a case. I wonder if anyone else has similar experience.