When Google introduced Quality Score (QS) in their Adwords PPC platform, it created a lot of buzz. And lots of buzz there is still.
The theory is sound. Your ad should be consistent with the search terms, and with the landing page. If someone searches for “blue suede shoes”, they would be more inclined to click on an ad about “blue suede shoes”, and are more likely to stay on a page about “blue suede shoes”. It’s all about RELEVANCE.
However, we often use related terms in our campaigns, because they logically make sense. For example, it makes logical sense to also target “blue leather footwear” if you sell blue suede shoes.
The Adwords platform will report a low QS on many of these related terms, because they don’t closely match the ad and the landing page content. Next to some keywords, you’ll see the message “Rarely shown due to low quality score”.
What Google WANTS you to do, is to create a separate ad for blue leather footwear, and have a landing page that talks about the same. This would be a LOT of work, and doesn’t make too much logical sense. Why have a page about blue leather footwear which is basically identical to your blue suede shoes page, just calling a spade a shovel?
The real question is: Does it REALLY matter?
After investigating a boat load of keywords with a reported low QS, we found that they were indeed showing up in search results, and showing up in their intended prominent position. They were also getting the clicks and converting as expected.
If we were to tune these keywords for a better Quality Score, we may actually reduce our Cost Per Click by a very small percentage. But at what effort and cost? And we MAY reduce the CPC - it’s not a guaranteed thing.
The bottom line is that, unless you’re in a hyper-competitive niche, you should not get too hung up on Quality Score.
If it ain‘t broke, don’t fix it.
Sidebar: Since writing this blog post, I had a personal one-on-one call with our Google Agency Strategy Team Representative, and she basically told me the exact same thing. Straight from the horse’s mouth, as they say.
Andreas Huttenrauch
I didn't invent the Internet, but I sure watched it be born and grow up."
