According to analyses by intelliAd Media GmbH, this “error” has now reoccurred on 20.11. and lasted until 24.11.2010. The effect can therefore affect any advertiser and might even affect the performance of the Adwords account. Judging from postings on blogs and forums and our own analyses, we are dealing with a worldwide effect.
“Up to now, we have had a very good historical Quality Score for numerous terms in the Adwords accounts of our customers from the fashion sector. But several days ago, our monitoring was showing a worse score for many keywords for no discernable reason, although these terms are highly relevant for the advertising accounts,” reports Managing Director Stephan Kellermann from NETRADA, Europe’s No. 1 in fashion e-commerce.
Netrada uses the Bid Management tool from intelliAd to monitor the Quality Score. Based on an analysis of the phenomenon, intelliAd was able to confirm this general trend and the abrupt change in the Quality Score for many Adwords customers.
- Quality Score Index at four levels: abrupt rise in Quality Score
Source: Measurements by intelliAd Media GmbH / Database: Approx. 10,000 campaigns and 1 million keywords over a period of time
The analysis shows a clear rise of the keywords given a Quality Score of 5 or lower from 20 % to just under 70 % over the last few weeks. This is remarkable because the Quality Score is normally only subject to minimal fluctuation.
To date, this irregularity has not been confirmed or commented on officially. The error has only been confirmed in the Adwords Forum and described as resolved in the meantime (approx. 15:00 hrs 25.11.2010). But various advertising customers are reporting considerable click, CTR and conversion losses.
Our measurements also confirm that the Quality Score has been back at its usual levels since 24.11. But especially during the Christmas season, when the largest PPC budgets of the year are being deployed, the problem is causing great anxiety amongst the advertising customers. This is because besides the higher click prices being critical, the total lack of advertising placements in response to relevant keywords is resulting in lower customer sales.
“We are seeing customers, where even their own brand keywords receive low scores and where the companies are experiencing major upsets as a result. However, a further investigation also showed that you cannot assume that click prices are rising across the board in this scenario,” says Mischa Rürup, COO of intelliAd Media GmbH.
Ultimately, it can be assumed that Google might also lose turnover, since some customers don’t see their ads appear in response to good words because of the bad score. Once again, the poor performance from the strongly increased click prices might result in advertisers having to curtail their budgets. You can therefore only speculate as to what the precise background to these irregularities in the Quality Score is. It might be a bug. But tests regarding the response by advertising customers and a lasting restructuring of the Quality Score algorithm are also conceivable. Currently, the problem seems to have been resolved once again.
“Everybody should monitor their Adwords account carefully at the moment, consider decisions on bids with this background in mind and not bid for the ‘FirstPageCPC‘ at any price,” recommends Tobias Kiessling, CTO of intelliAd Media GmbH.
Background on the Quality Score
According to Google, the Quality Score is a measures of the relevance of a keyword or of an ad. It combines click rate, relevance and load time of the landing page according to Google statements on the matter. The purpose that Google pursues with it is to ensure that the search engine user is always presented with the most appropriate ads.
The problem for the advertising customer is the fact that the Quality Score has a direct influence on the position and therefore also the click price in Google Adwords. If the Quality Score falls, the advertising customer must normally increase their bid to retain their position. For one, this can result in the click price rising. And sometimes, the customer’s ad disappears entirely from the first page.
