Let's say you start a campaign and at first you do a bad job selecting keywords and writing ad copy adn your CTR and conversion rate are horrible but then you tweek it and it gets better but now you're quality score is so low that you're getting charged a ton for each click. How can you start over? Is it based on Ad Group, Campaign, or account? In other words if i simply delete the Ad Group and create a new one with the better selected keywords and ad copy, will i start with a clean slate or do i have to go to the campaign level or even create a whole new account to be able to do this? Also, does conversion rate affect quality score too or just CTR? If you're not using conversion tracking, I don't see how conversion rate could affect your quality score?
If you have improved QS over time, then your QS will go up automatically and you will not have to start a new anything. Deleting and creating a new adgroup, campaign or even account will not start your QS over again. QS is obtained by the url and keyword combination, so even carrying over to a new account using identical information will still carry your QS to the new account. Your best bet to start over is to act as if you are starting from scratch 1. build a better keyword portfolio 2. bid high 3. write good text ads 4. optimize to great QS scores
yes, there are 2 ways 1st way - log into account, select campaign, select adgroup, select keyword tab, unhide the quality score column and there it is 2nd way - min cpc = quality score. The lower the min CPC the better your QS is. Quality score is only 3 levels Poor OK Great
Sorry but I have to disagree here. I had an adgroup which I set up badly and stupidly let it run for quite some time. In order to correct the problem I set up a new campain with this adgroup in and set it up properly (just a few keywords and two good ads). Now the keywords were doing really well on Yahoo and MSN so I kind of knew that there would be good potential on Google. I set my bid really high and just bit my tongue for a week while google stripped my wallet bare but the cost was coming down slowly. The end result was a $0.50 minimum bid with Google's recommendation to delete the keyword. Not being one to give up when I know full well that it's a good keyword I sat down and thought about it and what I could test. Next step was to transfer the adgroup to a friend's account that had a better account history and overall CTR. The minimum bid was immediately $0.10 - same keywords, ad text and landing page. That told me that changing the account would work so I set up a brand new account, transferred the adgroup into there and bid really again. Minimum bid started at $0.05 and over the next few days wavered between $0.05 and $0.10. The cost rapidly came down to sub $0.20 for position 1. I am now 2 months down the line and the adgroup is still quite happy, the keywords generally have $0.03 - 0.04 minimum bids. I confirm that I did not change the landing page (or domain) or ad text. The only difference was that in the old account the ads got a really bad CTR and the whole account in general didn't have a very good CTR. The new account has a respectable CTR still and the ad group has a 12.5% CTR.
Thanks for the responses guys. Alhermette, let me make sure I understand you correctly. You did try just transferring your better keywords/ads to a new Ad Group within the same account but it did not have nearly the same affect as creating a whole new account? When you transferred to a new Ad Group, the cost only came down slowly and leveled off at $.50 whereas creating a new account got them all the way down to $0.03-$.04?? If so, that's amazing and I guess I'll need to create a second account. Also, do you guys eliminate keywords with a poor quality score? Do you ONLY choose keywords with a Great quality score or do you also do ones that have OK quality scores?
This was done in late March this Year. Here's how my thinking goes. The first account was relatively new and had a poor average CTR, from memory just under 1%. When I deleted the original adgroup I created a single adgroup in a new campain with just the top keyword (based on performance in Yahoo) in exact match only and wrote a very specific ad. I was paying $0.10 per click in Yahoo and didn't reckon that it should be significantly more in Google. I set my bid at $5 and capped the budget for the campain fairly low. The first clicks started coming in at around $2 per click in position 1 and gradually dropped over a few days. After about 4 or 5 days it had stabilised at $0.50 with Google recommending that the keyword be deleted due to users not finding it highly relevant. No problems were indicated with ad text or landing page. I concluded that keyword history is not connected to the campain but rather the account. Perhaps it would have been possible to repair the account with time and work but it was far cheaper to just create a new account. I have nurtured the new account and made sure not to run anything that has a low CTR and the tactic has paid off. The same keyword now has a minimum bid of $0.03 and I am paying $0.09 for position 2.5 average. I have not altered the landing page in any way which still resides on the same domain. My new account is now beginning to benefit from its history with quite a few new campains getting minimum bids down to $0.02 - $0.05 right out of the starting gate. Account history seems to play a pretty important role and if you open a new account you seem to get a fresh chance. They'll slap you silly within days if you don't look after it right though!
This is great information! I'm very new to Adwords and have already messed up my account I'm sure I'll be starting over . . . once I get answers to a few more questions.
Interesting story... but I think if you did the exact same thing in the same account, you would have had the same effect. But perhaps you got a better running start from a fresh account
I have no doubt that it can be done from within the same account but the difference in cost was the issue. In the old account the minimum bid was still at $0.50 after 4 or 5 days, in the new account it was under $0.20 within the same time frame. new account costs $5 so the maths is simple - 15 or so clicks and you're in the black.
New accounts do reset everything. It doesnt' matter if you copy things word for word. IF you do the exact same bidding strategy and end up with a crappy ctr, then you will be right back to where you started. BUT since you started a new account and performed the bidding strategy correctly, you were rewarded. I've seen guys test thing in one account, (a throw away one) and then run only good stuff another account. This works well because if you can get and maintain a high ctr from day one, you will LOVE adwords. Most people fail because they test too many things at once and dont' think ctr matters as much as it does.