Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Google, Pay per click | 0 Comments

How qualified is a quality score?

For those in the PPC world a good quality score is something to be cherished and loved.  A quality score, for those not in the know, is applied by Google to every key word or phrase you bid on, with the score relating back to the page the advert links through to.  In the words of Google almighty “A keyword’s Quality Score for ad position is based on its clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the ad and keyword to the search query, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.”

Why do we love quality scores?  Simple really.  The higher the quality score, the less we have to pay for a click though; and the higher a position we gain in the paid for results.  The holy grail of quality score is obtained when it’s high enough to catapult your advert into the above organic (as opposed to side, and as of this week, below organic) search results.  Normally this only happens when you’re deep linking the advert into a specific key term geared page, or on brand name bidding.  In short.  Quality score x bid price = position.  And if you’re quality score is low, there’s just no way you’re going to be hitting the top spots on your paid for listings.

But just the other day this all came crashing down for me!

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Google, Tech Talk | 0 Comments

Word of warning for Google adword users about the Google Display Network

I’m a big fan of Google adwords.  No other marketing channel can compare for speed of delivery, trackability and reach.  From the smallest start up to the largest multi-national corporation it can deliver a touch point with potential customers at the right place, and the right time.  I’m not a whole-hearted evangelist though – there are flaws in the system and it’s worth highlighting one of the biggest ones.  Google adwords comes bundled with the Google Ad Network.  Let me explain what this means.