Karma I guess.
For several years I have been going into Google Groups and occasionally answering questions. One of the most common complaints is about Quality Score. And one of the most common questions is what do to about Quality Score problems.
I would answer those questions with some general suggestions on increased relevance and targeting that is more tightly focused : Keyword through Ad and Landing Page. Then I would also be sure to mention that time and patience are also needed to turn an accounts Quality Score around.
Well I have met my match, the shoe is on the other foot, swallowing some of my own medicine, however you want to put it. I finally had a client come to me, whose historical Quality Score was so bad, that I finally gave up on the account, and suggested to the client that we needed to open another and start all over.
Although they didn’t suggest it up front, three different AdWords support people did end up agreeing that the original account was terminal, dead, not worth resurrecting.
I had taken over managing other AdWords accounts that had almost every keyword inactive for search due to poor Quality Score. But after a little restructuring and a few days things start to improve and before you know it almost all words are getting a Great or OK Quality Score.
Not this one. It just sat there. No first page presence even with daredevil bids. Thus few impressions, fewer clicks, no action. Day after day went by and nothing changed. So we pulled the plug.
I was humbled, now I knew the frustration of following best practices but just being in too deep a Quality Score hole to crawl out, with any reasonable effort anyway, and in any reasonable length of time.
Wish List: It would be nice, if there were some gauge, as to how “poor” the historical Quality Score for an account, keywords within the account, and those same keywords across AdWords general experience really is. Something anyway, something to keep people from wasting their time trying to resurrect a terminal AdWords account.
Tom Hale - AdWords Specialist
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Jeremy Chatfield // May 21, 2008 at 3:31 am
Hi Tom -
I had a similar (not quite as bad) client account. It was still getting impressions, but at daft bids. IIRC, the clue was that a new AdGroup with “laser straight alignment” of keyword, advert and landing page, resulted in an elevated QS of $0.50. Normally, get the alignment right, and you look at $0.05 to $0.22 - so the higher MinCPC was a signal of wierdness.
The other clue was to look at the CTR - average for all time and monthly. It never crept above “abysmal” for the whole time.
I’ve now seen several accounts where a few keywords were poisoned in the history. If the client was larger, the costs of establishing a new history would have justified setting up a new account. As it was, I just paused those keywords and moved on - too expensive to resuscitate them for a small business.
2 tchale // May 21, 2008 at 9:54 am
Hi Jeremy,
How you been? Glad you stopped by.
Your anecdote rings true as always Jeremy. Interesting that you have been able to turn some accounts around by identifying a few rotten words that don’t respond to realignment
In the case I mention, the rot was pervasive. As an example, zip codes were used as keywords. That’s right, just 5 digits, broad form. And it wasn’t a postal related business
Comparing your anecdote to mine also points out the different levels of historical Quality Score. Keyword within account, overall account history, overall keyword performance across all advertisers, etc.
-Tom Hale
AdWords Specialist
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