AdWords / PPC - Quality Score Metrics and Definitions.
In your Pay-per-Click campaign, a quality score is shown for each keyword.
Quality Score is used in several different ways, including influencing your
keywords’ actual cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and estimating the first page bids that
you see in your account. In general, the higher your Quality Score (out of 10),
the lower your costs and the better your ad position.
Quality Score ensures that Google only shows relevant ads to its users. Searchers want to find the information
they’re looking for quickly and easily and Quality Score helps Google show more relevant ads to the content on
the URL that the ad drives them to. To make sure that your potential customers see your ad, you need to pay attention to Quality Score. It also influences your ads’ position, and it partially determines your keywords’ minimum
bids, which can help reduce your budgets.
Quality Scores range from 1 to 10
In your Google AdWords account, you can find your Quality Scores under the “keywords” tab. Each individual
keyword will show a quality score on a scale from 1 to 10 out of 10.
1-4: The keyword isn’t very relevant to users, and as a result may have a very high first page bid.
This means that the keyword isn’t performing very well for your website. Try experimenting with
variations of this keyword by using plural/singulars or grammatical tweaks. If you’d like to keep
advertising with this keyword, you can optimize instead. To do this, try lowering the first page bid,
writing a more targeted, relevant ad, or improving your landing page content.
5-7: This keyword is performing well, and there isn’t a need to worry too much. On a grading scale,
an AdWords Specialist at Google told us “a 6 or 7 is equivalent to an A-.” It may have a mid-range
first page bid, and the keyword may not be very costly. Optimization can lower your overall costs,
draw more clicks to your ads, and result in a better return on your investment (ROI). If you want
to further optimize, try using more targeted ad text and keywords or improving your landing page
content.
8-10: The keyword is extremely relevant and may have a high click
through rate (CTR), relevant
ad text, and a unique, relevant
landing page. The first page
bid for this keyword may be low
based on the marketplace and it
could be a low volume keyword
or search phrase. This keyword
is very relevant and effective for
your ad campaign. AdWords
Specialists at Google told us it
is very rare to get this high of a
quality score from Google.
