Is there any way to tell why Google is awarding a quality score of 4 vs. 7 vs. 10? All three of these show No Problems with keyword relevancy, Landing Page Quality and Landing Page Load Time. So what exactly is keeping the 4 from being a 7 and what is keeping the 7 from being a 10? Does Google tell us anywhere what factor made the keyword fall short of 10? Thanks
What you have to keep in mind is, QS is a relative calculation of your CTR compared to others using your keyword and adjusted for position. You are awarded a QS of 5 when your click rate is the average click rate of all advertisers for that keyword. So if you're in 6th position with a CTR of 1.5% and a QS of 5, it means that the average CTR of advertisers at that position is 1.5% So in short, what is keeping your QS of 4 from being a 7 is that your CTR is not high enough compared to your competitors. When you get to a QS of 7, you are doing well. A graph of QS would roughly be a bell curve and 60% of advertisers would fall between 4 and 6, 20% would be below four and 20% have a QS of 7 or above. So a QS of 7 means you are one of the top advertisers (best CTR) for that keyword. A QS of 10 is achieved by roughly 5% of advertisers. The QS is not just CTR but about two thirds. Another quarter or so is for keyword relevancy and the rest for on-page factors. This all assumes that you are following policies otherwise your QS is downgraded to 1 and your ads never show.
Lucid, Many thanks for your insights! I'm a little surprised that Google weighs CTR so high since all those click-throughs could bounce. But I guess if your landing page has passed the relevancy test they assume that a good chunk of the click-throughs will be happy when they land. What about conversion rate? I know you can add some JavaScript to your pages that will generate feedback to AdWords about how many visitors actually converted. Would Google consider this information "prime" and maybe weigh it even more than CTR? Thanks again.
Why would Google care that the clicks bounce, whatever that means? Their job is done once the ads are served. If you do your job, you have high quality for the searchers. The searchers are happy and Google is happy and they have done their job. If your visitors spend 3 seconds or 3 minutes on your site, buy or not, Google's has fulfilled their end. The rest is up to you. Conversion rate is not used in the QS calculation. Wouldn't make sense and not everyone uses it. Like I said, Google's job is not to rate how well you sell but how well you attract visitors with your ads.
A click that bounces would land on a page that the customer found so useless that they immediately hit the back button. My understanding is that what Google mainly wants is a happy customer. A customer who goes to the trouble of putting in a search at Google, clicking an ad that comes up and then landing somewhere totally useless to them is a customer who is likely to choose Bing for their next search. So if conversion rate is available as a metric, I would think that Google might take a look at it when determining QS.