Here We Go Again – Quality Score Update

Oy. The body of the email that I received yesterday had written in it just that one word, a sign of exasperation, almost frustration, if not resignation. What could have caused such a response? A quick look at the forwarded message explained it all. I received a forwarded copy of the most recent Inside AdWords post, "Quality Score updates." The company tends to have questionable timing in its posts, this one occurring on Valentine’s Day, no exception. Not much more than three months ago, at the height of Ad:Tech New York, when many had their minds elsewhere, Google unleashed their fourth announced update to the Quality Score. Those trying to enjoy the show instead found themselves scrambling to understand why their click activity dropped by as much as 90%. Before taking a look at the fifth installment of the Quality Score saga, let’s do a quick Quality Score recap:

August 7, 2005 – The beginning – Quality Score first introduced along with a helpful retooling of keyword statuses. Until that time, Google had only performance of the ad as a lever by which they could control price. Quality Score gave them another way to set a floor price per keyword. The inclusion of the new variable only confirmed what people had started to figure out – you can do it Google’s way or the highway.

December 8, 2005 – The first Quality Score update looked at the keywords chosen and the ad text. In their second iteration of the Quality Score, Google began looking at the landing page content as well. Google has a unique position; what sounds good to the public also makes them more money. More relevant ads and content on the landing page of the ads not only sounds like a win for the consumer, it also means more money for Google from increased clicks and trust with the ads.

July 7, 2006 – Google waited four months between the first and second Quality Score update and seven months between the second and third. If this were a product you actually looked forward to, you could say it was worth the wait. Unlike the first two Quality Score updates, which like Olympic diving were anxiety producing in sight but small in their splash, the third cannonballed itself off the diving board and soaked the audience like Shamu on a particularly unhappy day. Advertisers with a low Quality Score didn’t see bids raised, they saw them jacked like an ’84 Monte Carlo. As Google wrote then, "We realize that some minimum bids may be too high to be cost-effective — indeed, these high minimum bids are our way of motivating advertisers to either improve their landing pages or to simply stop using AdWords for those pages."

November 6, 2006 – It turns out that the Google tsunami which was update number three had an small asterisks that Google didn’t share. The quality update that had $.05 clicks become $10.00 only applied to ads running on search. Only Google knows why they updated search first, but regardless of the reasons, they covered their bases four months later with Quality Score release four. Now, those advertising on the content network could enjoy the same $10.00 clicks that they purchased only the day before for a nickel.

This brings us to yesterday…

February 14, 2007 – While Inside Adwords, the official blog for Google Adwords did have a Valentine’s day post (which leads to the question, "Is it wrong to click on the picture only to see if any of the Inside Adwords staff is cute?") this post carried no such message of love, although the interval between this update and the last mirrors closely the average of the four updates. After two consecutive massive updates, (translation: certain marketers getting absolutely wrecked), those who live and die by Google have become almost expectant of another change, albeit no more thrilled, in much the same way a resident of Key West, Florida feels about hurricanes. With each release, Google gets better at their Quality Score elevator pitch. In number five on the topic they say, "In order to serve high quality ads to our users, we use the Quality Score to set minimum bids for keywords based on keyword clickthrough rate (CTR), ad text relevance, the historical performance of the keyword on Google, and the user experience on the ad’s landing page. […]We also consider quality when we rank ads, higher quality ads benefit from higher placement on the page and a lower cost-per-click on average. So, high quality ads are not only more relevant for your potential customers, but can also help you improve your ROI by lowering your advertising costs." So what’s new with this one? Quite a bit, although the affects we’ll have to wait and see.

a. Transparency – not a word often uttered by Google and perhaps three years too late for the rest of us to take seriously, but that is what they claim to offer this week with "an optional Quality Score column that shows the minimum bid for all of the keywords within an ad group as well as a Great, OK, or Poor quality label for your keyword." Remember, YOU MUST ACTIVATE THIS COLUMN. It will not turn on by default.

b. Quality – sort of redundant when you talk of Quality Score updates, but the heart of the change comes in this piece. Google’s "transparency" reads like a thermometer. It will tell you how you stand now, but for many, the baseline they see will change. Google has now become more open in discussing that past performance for a keyword matters in price setting. In this update they say they have a new algorithm for testing keywords with limited history, in addition to "improving the Quality Score algorithm to make it more accurate in predicting the quality of all ads." Yes, very helpful. What it really means – Google is about to unleash another giant fart. Let’s hope it doesn’t stink.

Google and the Quality Score update has become a parallel to life. You can’t predict it, and you don’t know when your time has come. You can only do your best and hope that the ever increasing in omnipresence and omnipotence of Google will look upon you favorably as they judge you. It’s amazing that people would find a way to thrive in such an environment, and to those legitimate marketers who sit, noses ready for the Google fart, we salute you. Any cynicism aside, we want an equal playing field where those who clearly violate best practices have a harder time competing. As always, though, we hope that the backbone of advertising, direct marketers, receive a fair shake as well.