AdWords Quality Score: Don't Just Look at the Number

If you've got some experience managing cost-per-click (Google's term for pay-per-click) advertising using Google AdWords, you surely by now realize the high importance of optimizing for Quality Score. Either that, or you enjoy throwing away your or your clients' money.

According to Google, Quality Score (QS) is "the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.” Those last three elements that I've bolded are under your control, and thus ought to be high on your priority list of what you tweak on a daily basis in your accounts. Why? Because higher QS = lower cpc and better ad position = better ROI for you or your client.

I've recently observed, though, that just watching the QS score number on your keywords can lead to unnecessary frustration. You may be diligently putting into practice those things which should result in a higher QS*, yet not see a higher QS number for some of the related keywords. I've noticed recently, however, that in many cases it appears that Google is indeed giving you a boost reward in such cases even though they did not increase the QS number. In quite a few cases, after QS optimization, I've seen ad position rise (at the same bid level) and/or CPC go down, while the QS remained the same. Another indicator I've observed of post-optimization bump is a sharp drop in minimum first page bid for a highly competitive keyword.

So why didn't the QS go up in these cases? I believe that part of the reason is that QS is a 10 point scale. It's possible that you could be getting real credit from Google for optimization that isn't quite big enough yet to bump you all the way up to the next whole QS point. I suspect that if QS were expressed to one decimal point, you might in such cases see something like QS going from, say, 5.2 to 5.4.

The lesson in this is if you put a good amount of effort into making a relevance flow from keyword to ad to landing page, don't write off your efforts if you see no consequent increase of QS over the next several days. Be patient and wait for data to accumulate. Did the associated ad start to rise up the page at the same bid level? Has the CPC of the keyword been trending downward for the same or increased number of clicks? If yes, then it is likely that you got your reward, even if the QS number doesn't immediately show it.

*The linked post is a bit out of date (was posted when Google QS was "poor - good - great" instead of 1-10), but most of the tips are still relevant.

New Facebook Home Page: News Feed vs. Live Feed

Starting today (October 23) you should be seeing some important changes to your FB home page. You can now select between News Feed and Live Feed. Live Feed is what you've been used to seeing for the past year: Everything your friends are posting as it happens. News Feed is now a "best of" your feed, the posted items from your friends that Facebook thinks you are most likely to be interested in or want to interact with.

By popular request, some of the notifications that used to appear in your feed but had been moved to a sidebar are now back in the Live Feed.

You can edit options at the bottom of each feed to choose who shows up more or less in the two feeds.

(UPDATE: This post was created as a Google Sidewiki on the Facebook homepage, but the new homepage format seems to have broken Sidewiki for the site. Can't see my original post.)
in reference to: Facebook | Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

Marketers: Get Ready for Google Social Search

On October 21 Google announced at Web 2.0 Expo the coming-soon implementation of real-time Social Search incorporated into the regular search results page.

Results will appear at the bottom of the results page and will be culled from the searcher's own social networks, the ones listed on his/her Google Profile.

Marketers who have been ignoring social web sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed would do well to get on board now and start learning how to use them properly and building followings. Why? Imagine this scenario:

You run a website selling vacation packages for Tampa Beach, FL. One of your Twitter followers is looking for a good resort package deal for the coming weekend. It so happens that you've been tweeting about some great deals you're offering for this very weekend. Your follower goes to Google to search for potential packages. Even if she missed your tweets, they will likely appear on her search page because she is linked to you via Twitter.

in reference to: BREAKING: Google Announces Social Search (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tip: Use News Feed Groups to Filter Your Feed

Overwhelmed by your News Feed? Too much to read? Facebook allows you to create groups of your friends so you can temporarily just see who you want to see in your News Feed. For example, you might create a group of "Relatives" or "College Buddies." To make a new group:

1. In the News Feed column, click "More"
2. Click "Create New List"
3. Name the list and select the friends you want to include.

Now when you visit Facebook, just click the group in your News Feed list, and you will see updates only from friends in that group!

in reference to: Facebook | Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

Classic Misuse of Dynamic Keyword Insertion

From a search on Google for the keyword "ball cancer" (in the Sponsored Results column):

Next time I'm looking to buy cancer balls, I'll know where to go for the best deal!

How does this happen? How could Google be showing me an ad for something so far from what I was searching for (resources about testicular cancer), let alone something this vendor almost certainly does not have for sale? It's not Google's fault, unless you want to blame them for offering a powerful feature that's too easily misused. That feature is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). I won't go into all the details of how it works (but here's a great post about it), but the quick explanation is that DKI allows you to automatically insert into an ad whatever keyword in the list of keywords associated with the ad most closely matches the keyword searched for.

Used in highly-targeted situations, DKI can be a powerful and effective tool for increasing both click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. You are reflecting back to the searcher exactly what she was looking for.

The oddball result that was shown above came up because the advertiser simply created a very generic "one size fits all" ad and then dumped a huge amount of (probably broad match) keywords into it. This is the laziest form of pay-per-click advertising. 

So the Nextag.com example above is funny, but is there any real harm done?

First, I doubt there is any such product as "cancer balls" (at least, I hope not). A click through on the ad takes you to a page of various products that have both "cancer" and "balls" somewhere in their description, but what is the likelihood that any of these are what someone searching for "ball cancer" is looking for?

Second, this is a waste of the advertiser's money in so many ways, as well as a complete misunderstanding of the value of pay-per-click advertising. Inevitably the advertiser is paying for a lot of clicks from people who have no possibility of becoming a converted customer. Pay-per-click is one of the most efficient and cost-effective forms of advertising ever invented, but only because it allows you to narrowly target a niche market of people who are already actively looking for what you have to offer. What Nextag.com has done is the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see how much sticks. In the case of both spaghetti and real customers, the answer is: not much.

Last, this kind of advertising can result in a negative backlash against your brand. Consumers will learn quickly that they can't trust your ads to take them to what they actually want.

By the way, if you've spent any amount of time watching pay-per-click ads, you've probably spotted the all-time worst offender of slinging out these kinds of meaningless ads. I won't embarrass them here publicly, but if you're taking aim at a certain big box discount retailer, you probably just hit the _____. ;-)

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