the PPC Book

While on the phone with my top notch Google rep I was reviewing a particular account where a company name was a keyword (in an adgroup of maybe 4-5 variations of the company name). 3-4 of the keywords had a quality score of ‘poor’. This is one of those quality score quirks that drives people up a wall.

My rep’s response – paraphrased – If organic serps pull an inordinate percentage of clicks and the sponsored listing is getting a low ctr, it’s perceived to have low quality and can acquire a poor QS over time. Not because it’s an irrelevant keyword, but rather because it’s performing poorly. In this case, this company name has no other bidders, so the organic listing is a universal one with the map, etc., so it makes perfect sense no one is clicking on the ad. Not much we can do in this case.

This is an interesting situation and the explanation raised a lot of questions for me…

written by Jeff Hudson