My final breakout presentation of the day was a review of Adwords Quality Scores by Google Adwords Evangelist Frederick Vallaeys.  As paid search professionals, we are constantly working to appease Google’s ever-dynamic Quality Score requirements and as such, this was very appealing.  This was a nice comprehensive review; here are a few takeaways—

Some Google values to remember when considering Quality Score:

• The point is to balance the interest of all parties in the online advertising ecosystem.
• Quality is paramount to the overall Google experience
• “Ads are information too” and assist in the mission to organize the world’s information and made it universally accessible and useful
• Google would rather show quality ads or NO ads.
• Methods and algorithms that determine Quality Score/Rank etc. are constantly improving.

After this review, I found myself simply staring at a picture of a cow.  Not a bad presenting technique, as this definitely caught my attention.  Vallaeys then went on to tell a story about a contest where people had to guess the weight of a cow.  Now there were farmers involved in the game, and surely they would have a very educated guess, but children and people of all walks were welcomed to participate.  One man philosophized that if he took all of the guesses and averaged them, then that would be the closest to the actual weight of the cow.  He was correct.

It is this philosophy that points to why CTR is so heavily weighted in determining quality score.  The more people find your ad to be relevant, the more relevance is assumed.

We then reviewed the effects Quality Score has on your Adwords campaign:

• Eligibility – if your Quality Score is low enough, your ad may not run at all
• Position
• Extensions – determines Site Link eligibility
• Price (CPC)
• Top Slot
• DKI – if your Quality Score is low enough, your ad will not be allowed to use Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Here are a few things you might not know about…

• CTR: When your campaign is brand new and you have no historic CTR to determine Quality Score, it is based on an average for advertisers for that keyword
• Keyword Relevance: can be determined based on the situation
  • Example: “java” – if your company sells coffee, as opposed to javascript courses

The end takeaways reinforced the best practices we have come to know, love, revere and respect as professionals.  Always, always always…

• Organize your account for maximum effectiveness (think: ADGROUPS!)
• Choose relevant keywords (don’t just choose keywords strictly for volume of searches.  Searches for “Britney Spears” probably won’t benefit a paper company)
• Create straightforward, targeted ads
• Point users to a landing page with relevant, original content with quick load times (load times are important too!  I feel like this one is often overlooked)

Thanks to Frederick Vallaeys and Google for this presentation, and thanks to all sponsors and presenters involved in the Online Marketing Virtual Summit for a very educational and productive day!