Everyone in PPC (and related display advertising) today knows that ad rank is determined in part by your bid, and in part by a multifaceted relevancy measure called Quality Score.
What many still don’t realize is that Quality Score doesn’t merely determine rank on the page (of the ad listings), but also impression share or the frequency of delivery (Google currently refers to this as “ad auction eligibility”). With lower Quality Scores, ads may simply be shown less often, rather than just dropping down in position. Not only does that enforce relevancy standards, it provides a handy lever that Google can use to tweak its profitability. Change the algorithm a little bit, and some advertisers are forced to ramp up bids if they want fuller delivery of their ads. Google’s auction regime includes handy little “framing” features, like the estimated “first page bid” notation that implies you won’t even make it onto the first page of ads if you don’t up your bid.
There continue to be many other nuances of Quality Score that are really only taken into account by a tiny minority of advertisers:
- Quality Score is calculated on the fly for every query, for all eligible advertisers in a given keyword auction. What we see in our accounts next to the keywords (if you Customize Columns to view this) are reported averages.
