Google Quality Score – What is it and Why Does it Matter?

When talking to local business owners about search advertising, understanding Google’s metrics is often the cause of many headaches. A commonly asked question is not only how are my ads performing, but how do I achieve the most from a search advertising budget?

One of the most important metrics impacting search advertising is something Google calls Quality Score, which can affect the performance of search advertising campaigns.

What is Quality Score?

Here’s an easy to understand video explanation of how Quality Score works:

https://youtu.be/fZU3UA2Grlc

Quality Score is a way for Google to “grade” your search advertising keywords based on three factors: the keyword’s click-through-rate (CTR), relevance of the ad triggered by that keyword, and the quality of the landing page or website experience. Google created the Quality Score algorithm to help determine which ads to show consumers based on what they are searching for. The idea is to deliver the best possible user experience.

Google assigns each keyword a Quality Score on a scale of 1-10 based on the factors above. The higher the score, the better the keyword. A “good” Quality Score is above five and an “impressive” one is above a seven. A Quality Score below five usually indicates that your website and/or text ad does not have enough content relating to a particular keyword.

Why Does Quality Score Matter?

A higher quality score can bring you a lower cost-per-click (CPC) for your keywords and higher ad position on the sponsored section of the results page. It’s important that you optimise every part of your search advertising campaign, from your text ads to your landing page to help boost your Quality Score, and in turn, get more return on investment from your search advertising.

At the same time, Google’s Product Marketing Manager, Sean Quadlin says: “Quality Score is a diagnostic tool, not the end-all-be-all key performance indicator (KPI) to campaign performance. However, a high quality score can definitely help improve overall campaign performance and should never be ignored.”

Effectively Manage Your Quality Score

Managing AdWords campaigns can be time-consuming and confusing. If you don’t have time to manage it yourself, partnering with a business recognised by Google can help you achieve optimum quality when it comes to your search advertising campaigns. For instance, ReachLocal Australia and New Zealand won ‘The Best Quality AdWords Accounts’at the 2014 Google Adwords Premier SME Partner Awards for delivering high quality Adwords Campaigns to our customers. Our company helps local businesses effectively build, manage and analyse campaigns to maximize their advertising efforts. We proactively monitor performance while keeping Google’s best practices in mind.

Does your Quality Score make the grade? What keywords or landing pages have you implemented to improve the performance of your search engine advertising campaign? If you’d like some guidance with lifting your Quality Score contact us today!