Quality Score Introduction

I’m sure you’ve noticed me briefly mentioning the “Quality Score” and “Relevancy” in some of the previous sections. Well before we go any further I’m going to give you an introduction to Google’s Quality score system so you can begin understanding what needs to be done before you start.
What is the “Quality Score”?

First off, Google is all about accuracy and relevancy. Google wouldn’t be nearly as popular if it brought up inaccurate results. But since Google started, AdWords ads never had to be extremely relevant because after all, you were paying Google to display your text ads. But since 2006 Yahoo and Microsoft improved their search engines to bring up more accurate search results and Google saw this as a potential threat to losing long term searchers. So in order to out perform Yahoo and Microsoft, Google decided to dramatically increase the relevancy rules of AdWords advertisements and thus created the “Quality Score” system.

Basically, the Quality Score is a Google formula that determines the similarity of your advertisement towards the web surfers search query. If your advertisement is completely different from the web surfer’s search query, you will be given a “Poor” quality score and you will be required to pay more money to have your advertisement displayed. But, if your advertisement is extremely relevant and similar to the web surfer’s search query, you will have “Great” quality score and you will be able to pay much less money to have your advertisement displayed.
Benefits of Quality Score AdWords ranking system:

Although the Quality Score system may sound like a pain, it does have its advantages. Here are some of the advantages the Quality Score system has for you.

* The higher your Quality Score the better the average position of your Ad’s.
* The higher your Quality Score the less you pay per click, no matter what your rank is. (This means that it is possible for you to only pay $0.01 per click for the #1 AdWords position if your Quality Score is high enough)


* Google will automatically adjust your Max Cost Per Click and ranking based on your Quality Score. (If you have a low quality score you will pay your Max CPC in full and you will have a poor ranking. If you have a high quality score you will pay well below your Max CPC and you will have a higher ranking.
* If you have a high Quality Score you will receive more impressions which will lead to more clicks and more sales
* Your ads position will be increased for contextual advertising
* Accounts that perform very well will cause new keywords to automatically receive a higher quality score than if you added the new keywords to a new Google account.

Here is a good Quality Score idea to go by:

High Quality Score -> Better Ad Ranking -> More Impressions -> More Clicks -> More Sales -> More Profit
Disadvantages of the Quality Score

Besides the whole, if you change your target URL thing, the only other disadvantage is that if you don’t know what you are doing, you will run your ads incorrectly causing you to spend your Max CPC for each click, yet because of your mistakes your ranking will continually be lowered and your keywords will become very expensive. This will again cause you to raise your Max CPC only to have the same loop happen again. So in summary, following the quality score guidelines correctly is the difference between online success and online failure with Google.

Don’t worry though, because I will explain exactly what to do so you can avoid any trouble with the Quality Score.
How to Get A High Quality Score

There are several things that Google looks at to determine the quality score. Since this is an introduction to the Quality Score I will describe the main basic things that affect your quality score. I will explain the quality score in much more detail later in the guide.

What helps your quality score

* Having your advertisement as similar to the search query as possible
* Making sure the website you’re advertising is similar to the search query as well as the text advertisement you created

What hurts your Quality Score

Most of the following sites are considered undesirable webpages that will hurt your Quality Score:

* Websites that contain a lot of AdSense advertisements (if you don’t know what these are, they are text ads that say “Ads by Google” on websites).
* Websites whose main purpose was to collect email addresses
* Websites that are filled with advertisements
* Websites with unclear purposes
* Confusing websites
* Inaccurate websites

The following can also hurt your Quality Score:

* Creating advertisements that are not related to the search results
* Using keywords that don’t describe the website or product you’re advertising

Now that you know the basics about the quality score, it’s time for you to move on and start making money!