10 things you should know
When it comes to Ads Quality, there's a lot to learn. Based on what we've heard from our advertisers writing in, at conferences, and on forums, we've taken the time to put together what we believe are 10 things you should know about Ads Quality.
There might not be ads on all search results, even for queries that advertisers are bidding on.
In order to be consistent with our philosophy of showing the right ad to the right user at the right time, we'd rather show no ads on a page than show low-quality ads. That's why you might find that there are no ads on a page, even when an advertiser is bidding on the query that generated those results. You can find out why your ad may not be showing for a given query by using the Ads Diagnostic Tool.
Just because there is low competition for a keyword doesn't mean that it will be inexpensive.
Remember that competition is only one of the variables that determines your actual CPC. The price you pay for a click is also determined by your relative keyword Quality Score for that query. If your keyword has a low Quality Score relative to the other ads on that page, you may find that your actual CPC is close to your maximum CPC, even though there is low competition for that keyword. Keep in mind, though, that you'll never be charged more than your maximum CPC for a click, no matter how low your Quality Score.
Your ad position is not a factor in your Quality Score.
While we do use clickthrough rate (CTR) to help determine score, a higher ad position will not actually help you get a higher quality score. As you probably have observed, ads in high positions typically earn better CTR than those in low positions, because ads in high positions are more visible to users. Therefore, to calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it's important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score. Your ad's position on the results page is taken into account when we use its CTR to determine Quality Score. So even if your ad isn't the first one of the page, it's still possible to get a great Quality Score.
Your bid primarily impacts your rank, not your Quality Score.
Quality Score is broadly calculated based on CTR (adjusted for position), keyword relevancy, and landing page quality. Your bid is not a factor in your Quality Score determination. Visit the What is Quality Score? section of this site to learn more about how your Quality Score is determined.
Quality is given extra consideration when determining which ads appear in the top slots.
For ad placement in top positions above Google search results, we use the same Ad Rank formula, based on your Quality Score and CPC bid. However, only ads that exceed a certain Quality Score and CPC bid threshold are eligible to appear in these positions. The CPC bid threshold for these positions is determined by the matched keyword's Quality Score; the higher Quality Score, the lower the CPC threshold. This ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show above search results.
Your ad conversion rate does not affect your Quality Score.
Some advertisers using AdWords conversion tracking mistakenly believe that they should set an easy conversion event on their landing pages to artificially boost their conversion rates. In reality, this will not have any effect on your Quality Scores. Feel free to use conversion tracking responsibly, and don't worry about its impact on your Quality Scores.
A few bad days of performance will not ruin your Quality Scores.
In order to optimize your account, we encourage you to run targeted tests on your bids, creatives, and keywords. These small tests are a useful way to measure the impact of changes before applying them to the rest of your account. You should carefully track the performance of your experiments. If you find that they don't perform well after a few days, you can revise your experiment or delete those changes, and the short-term impact on your Quality Score will soon be outweighed by the prior and future performance for that keyword.
Quality Score doesn't suffer when your ads are showing infrequently or not showing due to pausing or budgeting.
Quality Score is only calculated when your ads are triggered by a user's query and display on the Google search results page. When your ads are paused or not showing due to budget, or low bids, your Quality Score is not affected.
Restructuring your account doesn't cause you to lose your historical Quality Score information.
The history of keywords, ad texts, and landing page is preserved when you restructure your account. Experiment with improved account structures. You can always go back if they're not successful.
Google does not keep track of your landing page quality history.
While there may be some delay between times when Google crawls your landing page, we only use the latest crawl of your page to determine your Quality Score.
