Quality Score Without the Mystery

A number beside every keyword

Open the keywords view of an AdWords account and you can add a column called Quality Score: a number from one to ten beside each keyword.

Many advertisers never look at it. Some look, and assume it is a secret grade they cannot influence.

It is neither secret nor fixed. It summarises three judgements about your ads, and each of the three has practical causes.

It also affects what you pay, which is why it is worth understanding before you raise another bid.

Why it costs money

Each time someone searches, AdWords runs an auction among the advertisers whose keywords match.

Position is decided by Ad Rank, which combines your bid with the quality of your ad and other factors, including your ad extensions. A better ad can sit above a higher bid.

You usually pay less than your maximum bid: roughly what it takes to hold your position. Higher quality lowers that amount.

Low quality works the other way. You pay more for the same place, and below a minimum level your ad may not show at all, or not above the results.

The three parts and the score

• Expected clickthrough rate, how likely your ad is to be clicked for that keyword.
• Ad relevance, how closely the ad matches the intent behind the search.
• Landing page experience, how useful the page is after the click.
• A rating for each of the three: above average, average or below average.
• The score itself, a summary of the three from one to ten.

The fourth matters more than the score. A seven tells you little; below average on landing page experience tells you exactly where to work.

You can add a column for each rating beside the score, so the diagnosis takes a minute.

Expected clickthrough rate

This is an estimate of how often your ad will be clicked when it shows for that keyword, compared with other advertisers and allowing for where the ad appears.

It falls when the ad does not look like an answer to the search. Someone typing emergency furnace repair skims past an ad about the company's thirty years in business.

Ads that repeat the searcher's words in the headline and give a concrete reason to click tend to be clicked more. Extensions such as a phone number, sitelinks and callouts help, and count toward Ad Rank in their own right.

Vague keywords drag it down. A keyword like removal on its own matches searches about stains, snow and tattoos, and few of those people click an ad for a truck.

Ad relevance

Ad relevance asks whether the ad speaks to the intent behind the keyword.

When it is below average, the cause is usually an ad group holding many unrelated keywords, all sharing one general ad.

An electrician's ad group with panel upgrades, pot lights and old wiring replacement, served by one ad saying Licensed Electricians, gives none of those searches a specific answer.

The fix is structural: smaller ad groups built around one theme each, with ads that use that theme's words.

Landing page experience

This rates what happens after the click: whether the page matches the ad, is useful, works easily on a phone, loads quickly, and is open about who the business is.

The most common failure is sending every ad to the home page. Someone who clicked an ad about panel upgrades lands on a general welcome and has to hunt.

Each ad group should go to the page that matches it, with the ad's promise visible at the top and a phone number that works with one tap.

Speed counts here too. A page that takes several seconds to appear on a phone loses people before it loads.

A worked example

A junk removal company with two trucks, working across the North Shore, ran one AdWords campaign with a single ad group: about forty keywords, from mattress disposal to renovation debris to estate cleanouts.

One ad served all of them, and every click went to the home page.

With the rating columns added, the pattern was plain. Ad relevance was below average on most keywords, and landing page experience was below average almost everywhere.

The account was rebuilt into ad groups by job: furniture and mattresses, appliances, renovation debris, estate cleanouts.

Each got ads naming that job and the area served, and a page about it: what is taken, how it is priced, and how soon a truck can come.

A search for estate cleanout now met an ad about estate cleanouts and a page about estate cleanouts, which is exactly what the ratings measure.

A month later the ratings were read again, keyword by keyword, before any bid was touched.

What does not move the score

Raising the bid buys position at the same quality, at a higher price. The score does not move.

A dash instead of a number means there is not yet enough data to calculate one. That is common in small accounts and is not a fault.

And the score is not a target. It is a diagnosis, and the aim is profitable clicks, not a ten.

Where to start in a small account

Sort keywords by cost over the last three months and work down from the top.

A below-average rating on a keyword that spends a few dollars a month can wait. The same rating on your most expensive keyword costs money every day.

Where landing pages are the weak part, fix them first, since one better page serves every keyword that points at it.

The counter-case

Quality Score is a guide, not the goal.

Your own business name usually scores well and costs little. A competitive keyword may score average for sound reasons and still bring profitable work.

A keyword with a low score that reliably produces booked jobs is worth keeping. One with a ten that never produces an enquiry is not.

In a very small account, with a few clicks a week, many keywords show no score at all. There, judge by enquiries and fix the obvious mismatches.

Where there is enough data, read the three ratings, fix the weakest, and let the score follow.

The order to work in

1. Add the three rating columns to keywords.
2. Sort by cost over three months.
3. Split mixed ad groups by theme.
4. Write ads using each theme's words.
5. Send each group to its matching page.
6. Check those pages on a phone.
7. Review the ratings after a month.

Step five usually matters most, since most small accounts send every click to the home page, and one page that matches the ad serves every keyword in its group.

Bidding on business names, including yours, is covered in a competitor's ad above your name.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.