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Good Adwords Quality Score Doesn’t Equal High Traffic

Posted on April 17, 2007 in Google Adwords, PPC  

I received a question concerning Google Adwords Quality Score and that they have good QS but don’t get any impressions. I am going to address this issue in todays post but first here is the email i received:

When running campaigns on adwords I sometimes notice that I have a quality score
of ok or better for all my keywords however only 1 or 2 of them get any real
amount of impressions. I know these keywords have a good search volume as they
are either quality keywords or I can verify it through google/wordtracker/yahoo.
Is their a way to tell adwords to give all my keywords equal impressions?

Right now I have a campaign with about 200 keywords for the finance market. Out of
all of them only one is showing any real amount of impressions and its probably the
most obscure one out of my list. I’d love to get more impressions out of the others
to see which ones can convert.

First off congrats on getting Good or Great Quality score many people have trouble even accomlishing that. I noticed you said you have a campaign that is in the finance market. Well the finance market can be pricey which is why even though you have Good Quality Score you are not getting any impressions especially if you are bidding the bear minimum to keep the keyword active. This would make perfect sense as to why your obscure phrase is getting impressions as many people are probably not bidding on that single phrase. The solution to get more impressions is bid more, just because google gives you a good quality score and says your minimum bid can be .05 that doesnt mean that bid you will get impressions. OR try to gather up more obscure keywords and bid directly on them for cheaper. This all depends on how much your spend VS return formula comes out as you don’t want to bid so much that you are not making a profit. I will say this though, many times i have had to bid a little more knowing that over time (not always but usually if your CTR is good and QS is good)  you payout per click will decrease even though your bid is higher as Googles system starts recognizing your site for those searches as a better match than other bidders.

Lastly, don’t limit yourself to just Google Adwords look to other sources of Search Engine Traffic. Even though most people stick with the top 3; MSN, Yahoo, and Google, you can get return from other search engines out there.



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Comments

4 Responses to “Good Adwords Quality Score Doesn’t Equal High Traffic”

  1. Blackbeard on April 17th, 2007 10:33 am

    Also, don’t forget that your QS is not an isolated value. Just because you have a good quality score doesn’t mean your competition doesn’t have a GREAT quality score. If they have maxed out the quality score and you haven’t, then it makes sense that you aren’t showing up.

    The other thing is that say for the sake of example, that everyone had the same quality score. Then quality score means nothing and bid price is everything.

    Long story short, bid more and see what happens. Maybe start at your break even point and work down from there.

  2. CPA Affiliates on April 17th, 2007 11:15 am

    Blackbeard that is a GREAT point! if Quality scores as the same then it all comes down to the money/bid as you stated.

  3. Paul on April 18th, 2007 7:41 am

    Question for CPA Affiliates.

    Let’s say you have a good quality score with a minimum bid of .15 cents. However, in order to really attract visitors you have to bid .50 cents to get on 1st page. With great CTR, and a brief history…how low can a person expect to see the CPC drop for that keyword roughly?

    Good post!

  4. CPA Affiliates on April 18th, 2007 9:51 am

    Paul,

    It really depends on the market you are in. For instance I have one campaign that i started bidding at .20 (good CTR and QS) and now it is down to .08 . But i have another campaign (different target demographic) I started bidding at .70 (good CTR and QS) and now it is down to .40 So it really varies on the market and what other people are bidding and their QS. As previous commenter made mention if Everyone has good CTR and QS it is purely a bidding war then.