Initial Google Keyword Quality Scores May Be Inaccurate

Search engine marketers who have done their research know the elements that compose a good through excellent Quality Score.  In our previous post, we summed up Google’s Quality Score stating that it is mainly based off of the relevancy between your keywords, ad groups, text ads, landing page quality and load time, historical click through rate and overall account history.

So, why do our keywords end up with terrible quality scores after putting together such a well-rounded account?  It may seem a bit confusing at first, but, don’t lose hope just yet!

Brad Geddes teaches us how to overcome this barrier and turn initial keyword quality scores into a very useful measuring tool against competition.

Geddes explains that when a keyword is added into an account, that keyword is given a quality score, but this is not the “actual” keyword or landing page quality score.

Geddes clarifies by stating, “the initial quality score is a default quality score for everyone who has used this word before you. That’s an important benchmark as you can compare your quality score to your overall competition.  After you add several keywords, run a keyword report and save the quality score info for those new keywords.”

The question is, how do we know when we get our real quality scores?

“After the new keywords added (the ones with the poor quality scores) have accrued enough data for Google to make a statically significant decision about what your actual quality score is (which could be a day to a few weeks depending on how many impressions, clicks, and when Google crawls your landing page) then your keywords are updated with your actual quality score.

Run another keyword report on your actual quality score.

Compare this data to the original quality score.”

It all makes sense now.  A simple comparison within a month’s time could possibly differentiate us from our competitors.

A search engine marketing firm is able to handle all of these updates and comparisons for you, especially if you start with higher quality scores and then see them drop to lower scores down the road.