My Company is XYZ, my domain name URL is XYZ. All my paid search campaign ads reference XYZ both in the display URL, the destination URL, the ads themselves and there are at least 6 – 12 instances of my company name on the landing pages I drive traffic too. There is one brand ad group in a separate brand campaign XYZ.
And yet I have a quality score of 7 or less for all variations of my company name keywords.
How can that be you ask?
Good Quality Score PPC question and an issue Google needs to address.
Quality Score is used by Google to evaluate quality of keywords to determine minimum bids and ad position for maximum bid value. Quality Score is determined for each keyword you bid on, by click-through rate for the keyword, relevance of ad text, historical performance, the quality and relevance of the landing page and the site to the keyword. Google also uses conversion tracking values when available as an indicator when calculating the Quality Score. Quality Score multiplied by the Maximum Bid gives you the value Google uses when setting your keyword’s status as active or inactive, and the position of active keywords.
So with a click through rate of over 20% and a conversion rate of over 5% how is it that my brand keywords are so low in quality score? Obviously something is not correct and last year Google addressed the Brand issue in organic search with an update February 2009 initiated by an engineer concerned with Brands lack of visibility in search results. The engineers name Vince, was also the name of the algo update reflecting a new push for Brand recognition in the SERP’s.
Added as of a couple of weeks ago, Google Search now returns ‘brand links’ on organic results as a new organic update several weeks ago May 2010.
So with all the fuss around promoting brands, how is it paid search is still so far behind and a companies name keywords and phrases are not garnering a Quality Score of 10 to reflect the Brand value?