Ranking Quality Score

Google have the following to say on the Ranking Quality Score:

For ad ranking, our system evaluates how well your ad has performed in relation to a user’s specific query. Our system therefore considers your keyword’s CTR, ad text relevance, and your keyword’s relevance in relation to a user’s search query.

The first thing Google decides is which position your advert appears in. That’s fairly straightforward , the cost per click is multiplied by the Ranking Quality Score, and the adverts are ranked according to this. So, if you’ve got the following seven adverts, with the cost per clicks and Quality Scores given, the rankings would be as follows:

Advert Bid Quality Score Adj. Bid Position
A £1.00 1.0 = (1.0*1.0) = £1.00 3
B £0.90 1.6 = (0.9*1.6) = £1.44 1
C £0.80 1.1 = (0.8*1.1) = £0.88 4
D £0.70 2.0 = (0.7*2.0) = £1.40 2
E £0.60 1.2 = (0.6*1.2) = £0.72 6
F £0.50 1.5 = (0.5*1.5) = £0.75 5
G £0.40 1.7 = (0.4*1.7) = £0.68 7

Now comes the hard part , how much do you actually bid to get that position?

Google starts with the bottom position , in this case G which is seventh , and charges the minimum bid. For the sake of argument, we’ll call this £0.10

To get sixth, advert E needs an adjusted bid of 0.69 (to beat the 0.68 for G). Given that it has a Quality Score of 1.2, the actual bid would need to be £0.57 (as £0.57 * 1.2 = £0.69).

To get fifth, advert F needs to beat the adjusted bid of 0.72 from G, which means that the actual bid for F would be (0.72/1.5) = £0.48

And so on¦

Filling in the remaining numbers, you get the following:

Advert Bid Quality Score Adj. Bid Position Actual Adj. Bid Actual Bid
B £0.90 1.6 = (0.9*1.6) = £1.44 1 £1.41 = (1.41/1.6) = £0.88
D £0.70 2.0 = (0.7*2.0) = £1.40 2 £1.01 = (1.01/2.0) = £0.50
A £1.00 1.0 = (1.0*1.0) = £1.00 3 £0.89 = (0.89/1.0) = £0.89
C £0.80 1.1 = (0.8*1.1) = £0.88 4 £0.76 = (0.76/1.1) = £0.68
F £0.50 1.5 = (0.5*1.5) = £0.75 5 £0.73 = (0.73/1.5) = £0.48
E £0.60 1.2 = (0.6*1.2) = £0.72 6 £0.69 = (0.69/1.2) = £0.57
G £0.40 1.7 = (0.4*1.7) = £0.68 7 - £0.10

Which is useful to know, but how is this important?

Consider advert A, which is pretty hopeless, with a Quality Score of 1.0. If A can get onto the same level as G, and improve the Quality Score to 1.7, it jumps to the top of the search ranking, and even ends up paying less! Instead of paying £0.88 to appear third, they would pay £0.85 to be top! Cheaper clicks, and twice as many of them! That’s a big return for just changing the advert text a bit, and making sure that the advert is more closely matched to the search term (you can do this by trying to turn your broad match traffic into phrase and exact match by adding new keywords).

But what if you’ve already got a good Quality Score? Is it worth trying to squeeze a little bit more out of your advert, or is your time better spent doing something else?

Consider advert F. What happens in the above example, if they increase their Quality Score from 1.5 up to 1.55? They don’t move up the rankings, so it’s probably not worthwhile? Wrong. Two things happen here. Firstly, their advert costs £0.46 instead of £0.48. So they get about 5% more clicks for their money (if they are limited by their budget), or pay 5% less for their traffic (if they aren’t). That’s like getting 2½ weeks of traffic free every year.

But as always, Google doesn’t lose out (they’re very clever here!) as advert C pays £0.70 instead of £0.68 for their advert. So your competitors are effectively giving you their money! Depending on how you feel about your main rivals, this may give you a very warm and fuzzy feeling inside¦

One point worth remembering here is that the Ranking Quality Score isn’t static – one of the attributes that impacts it is the click through rate, which is constantly changing.

So, whilst B may be paying £0.40 today, it may be £0.38 or £0.42 tomorrow, due to variations in both B’s and A’s click through rates.

Page last updated by Steve Baker on May 11, 2008 at 7:09 pm.

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4 Responses to “Ranking Quality Score”

  1. Louis Winthorpe III

    Excellent information on this report! Just wondering though, I’m in the UK as well and I haven’t seen how you could calculate your Quality Score in figures because its either Great, Good, or Poor as far as I know. Am I missing something? Thanks.

  2. Steve Baker

    You can’t see your Ranking Quality Score at all. You can see a guide to your Minimum Bid Quality Score on the keyword-level page, by customising your columns and showing it.

    The numbers above are a demonstration of how the Ranking Quality Score works – in practice you can’t see it, but this shows how important it is to try to maximise it.

    Of course, how you’re supposed to maximise a number you can’t see is another question – the Minimum Bid Quality Score is the closest you’ve got, as it uses most of the same inputs, but nobody really knows how accurate a guide it really is.

  3. Louis Winthorpe III

    Thanks for that Steve – much appreciated.

  4. harshvardhan kusumakar

    hi, i am a student of internet marketing and i would like to thank Steve for writing on this topic in such a simple way, i understand the whole thing so clearly and it will definitely going to help me score some good marks :) .

    Thank you very much.

    harsh

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