1. Quality score affects your ad position.
OK, most people know this, but it’s worth mentioning just in case: Google determines the position of your ad based on a keyword’s ad rank, not based on your bid. Ad rank is calculated as quality score multiplied by your bid.
If your quality score for a keyword is high as compared to your competition’s quality score for that keyword, your ad may appear above theirs even if you’re bidding less than they are.
2. The biggest factor in determining Quality Score is your CTR for the keyword.
The higher your CTR, the higher your Quality Score.
3. CTR is relevant to the specific search network where your ad is shown.
When your ad shows on a Google search site (e.g. google.com, google.ca) only your CTR on Google search sites will affect the quality score used to compute ad rank.
When your ad shows on a search partner site (e.g. ask.com or aol.com) your CTR on that specific partner site and your CTR across the search network affect the quality score used to compute ad rank.
Display network CTR doesn’t affect the quality score used for the search network.
4. CTRs are normalized for ad position.
All things being equal, if your ad is shown in a higher position, it will have a higher CTR. Google obviously knows this and therefore considers your CTR relative to your ad position when determining a keyword’s quality score. From a quality score standpoint, you aren’t penalized for being in a lower ad position.
- Google compares your CTR when shown in position 1 to how competitors perform for that keyword in position 1.
- Google compares your CTR when shown in position 2 to how competitors perform for that keyword in position 2.
- And so on.
5. Landing page quality is either relevant or not relevant.
When determining the quality score of a keyword, its landing page is judged as either relevant or not relevant. If the landing page is considered relevant (“no problems”), there is nothing more you can do to the landing page that would further optimize the keyword’s quality score.
6. Landing page load time is either good or poor.
Similar to the above, once your landing page load time is deemed fast enough to be good (“no problems”), speeding up the load time even more won’t help the keyword’s quality score.
7. Quality score is based on exact match.
If you have broad, phrase, and exact match versions of a keyword, only the exact match CTR affects quality score. If you have only phrase and/or broad match versions, then only the CTR for search queries that match the keyword exactly are used.
A note about Quality Score history
Only a keyword’s current quality score is shown in the AdWords interface. To keep track of quality score changes, each week run (and save) a keyword report that includes the quality score for each of your keywords.
Suggested Reading:
- More on Ad Rank [adwords.google.com]
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