Subscriber Byron Walker in Colorado sent me a fantastic video that shows the impact of Google Quality Scores on Cost Per Click and profitability.
It shows two nearly identical Google accounts promoting identical affiliate offers. One is in an old, established Google account; the other is a recently opened, less-trusted Google account.
The old one does well; new one is penalized with pessimistic Quality Scores. Byron runs both for a week and shows you the considerable difference in click cost and bottom-line profit.
Click here to watch the video – it’s 5 minutes long (opens in a new window). Byron’s story of Google Love, very enlightening.
Byron also provided an example of a handy spreadsheet that he uses to calculate the ROI, which you can download here.
Thanks Byron!
Perry Marshall
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
28 Comments on “A-B Comparison: Google Quality Score and Account Maturity”
Is there a benefit to starting over? My AdWords account is twelve years old and I’ve used it for half a dozen businesses. I think the quality score is hurt and now that u have a single business I want to focus on I thought I’d open a new AdWords account just for that business. Then somehow Piet over the relevant settings, campaigns, ad groups, keywords, negative list and ads that had to do with only that business.
If that is a good way to go, what’s the most efficient way of copying those things from one AdWords account to another? Is there an export/import for these things? A software u can use/buy? A specialist who I can hire to do this for me?
Danny,
I suggest you contact George Krahn https://provenresultsagency.com/about-us/our-team/ with this question – I suspect the answer is context dependent.
Perry
That is fascinating. I would agree with Rich though, that well written ads can level the playing field somewhat.
Vince, (or anyone)
Would you please explain what a “going against campaign” is?
Bill,
I never use the whole company name on one line unless I know for sure it’s not trademarked. Goog blocks it anyway.
I’ll split the trademarked name, part on the first line and the rest on the second. You waste some great space but it can be effective.
For example, Home on the top line and Depot starting the 2nd line.
Or I’ll misspell it. That might work for the Wii.
And one more point.
The age of a Google account really has nothing to do with CPC, CTR or positioning.
I’m working with someone on an account that is about 3 weeks old. She was slapped for 2 weeks. I finally got something up and approved about 7 days ago. Her CPC is .07-.12, her ad positions is 2.5-3.5 and her QS are all 7-9.
I have her running a very similar campaign to the one that was slapped for me. First I started with something really relevant and let it run for about 2 days.
Then I switched the landing page to the one that Goog slapped for me. QS 7-9. Go figure.
Age is nothing. Google’s idea of relevance for the lander, add and keywords is everything.
One other thing that is REALLY interesting.
When working trying to get my slapped campaign back up,(see previous post I made) I actually deleted the offending lander. Then made a Goog approved relevant one using the same domain name and it still got slapped.
The one thing I forgot was that some of the offending landing pages were indexed by Google under organic listings.
So even though I deleted the offending page off the face of the earth, Goog still considered my indexed lander as an offender and slapped the new lander.
A new domain must be used if the offending one has been indexed.
I’m not sure if I’m making sense. I’ve been working about 36 hours straight and I have to get to sleep.
The plan now is to have 1/2 dozen domains in waiting. Then when the slap comes, ditch the offender and bring in the back up.
This is a pain but the “Going Against Campaign” is just too lucrative and easy not to continue with it. I encourage all to try it.
You do have to research your butt off to find the right niche. I right click on every competitors page, grab the keywords under page info or source code, and check them out.
I’ll look at 200 competitors if I have too. Theres gold in them hills if you look.
Now I understand that Goog wants the searcher to have a complete successful relevant search. But if an advertiser runs an against campaign with CTR of 4-5%, doesn’t that prove that in fact the searcher wants to look around?
Sorry for the long post. I’m beyond freaking out with no sleep!
Chris, if you put the right offer in front of the right crowd, you will get sales.
Think like the searcher who has credit card in hand.
Since your CTR is ok you must be a good ad writer.
Since no one is buying, either your landing or squeeze page needs work or your merchant’s page does or your connecting with the wrong crowd or the right crowd in the wrong part of the buying cycle.
Test test test.
Did I say test.
One of the toughest things for an option trader to do in the stock market is get off a dog, (loser).
Same thing with PPC. You have to recognize a dog if you have one.
I noticed only a few people have mentioned CTR. Byron’s campaign had a CTR that was almost double his friends campaign. This is a significant factor which should not be underestimated.
Write good adds, hmmm – write great adds, and google will love you too.
Vince:
Were you using the other company’s name in your ads as well as bidding keywords? I tried a Nintendo wii campaign and the ads were never even shown. Google has a list of trademarked names that will never get off the ground.
been doing google for about a month now. And i dont seem to get many coversions. My ctr is good im geeting a average position of 4.5 but don’t seem to get them to convert. What am i doing wrong.
Thank to Byron for the video. Yup, gettin’ them quality scores right is the name of the game.
Hi Perry,
I have watch the 5 mins video by Byron. I take
a close look at the statistics he made on the
excel spreadsheet.
The tracking was excellent from Wed-Tue. But I did
not know how Bryon compile those reports.
The question I would like to ask is what tracking
tool that he use to track and export to excel format?
Winson
I think it really has to do with the fact that both their Landing Pages (content wise) as highlighted by Byron are very similar. It’s almost inevitable the quality score is affected for the new entrant. Morale of the study, don’t copy, create your own unique content for each landing page. The new entrant is perceived by Google as not really adding VALUE to their system.
Thanks for sharing Byron.
How can a newbie overcome this? Learn quick I guess!
Thanks for the video Perry.
I thought one of the most important tips from the video wasn’t actually mentioned outright – he makes MUCH more from the content network than from the search network, I’ve found the same thing in my campaigns.
Hmmm…interesting stuff.
Cheers
Rocky
My Goog account is approx. 8 mths. old. I have a campaign that was doing about $1500 per week clear. I call it a “going against campaign” for lack of a better name.
In other words, I find a product selling already then find something better and cheaper to sell. I use various combination’s of the other company’s name as keywords.
This campaign ran for about 12 weeks, average CPC .07-.11, QS 7 and 8’s, CTR 4-5%. It was awesome.
Then Goog slapped me this morning, Friday the 17th.
QS are all 1, ads not showing.
I do a short review of the product I’m going against then everything else is a sales pitch using a personal story on my landing page.
This campaign ran so long with great everything I kinda thought Google was going to let it go then boom, they nailed me.
I’ll be working all night trying to get something else up. Saturdays are big days for this niche.
Anyone else have problems like this?
Thanks
Jonathan,
Doing Google AdWords was much easier four years ago when I started . I bought Perry’s “Definitive Guide” and read it three times (at least). And applied what I learned religiously.
You have to decide whether PPC is a skill you want to learn or out source to someone else.
There have been a number of comments about the age of the account. I have not read anywhere, where the age of the account makes any difference. I would like to see clarification about that. I have seen the age of an individual campaign having a big impact, and that may even be down to the individual keywords.
Byron gives a great example how small changes do make a big difference. The biggest difference between the two campaigns may be the campaign ages and possibly small differences in quality scores. Something as small as the difference in the domain names may have a factor.
I appreciate Byron sharing.
John Deck
John Fox
I will site two campaigns regarding CTR.
In the first case I could get limited changes to the landing page to make SEO improvements & improve the quality score which was poor. Started with a high bid price to get traffic and quickly did A/B testing to get the CTR up. Over time I dropped the bid price to a third and kept the 1-2 position. Pretty obvious the aging of the CTR had an impact on bid price. And the quality score did creep up over time. (BTW, I had done a campaign in the keyword set before and knew the dynamics of the players)
In the second case: Built a squeeze page that had quality score 7 to start with. Quickly got a good CTR. Minor changes to bid prices over the 90 days to hold positions 2-4.
Base on the 1st case that was in a competitive market, the aging of the CTR did make a big difference.
John Deck
I’m With Sara
What if we do not have the big buck for Pay Per click? And if we do seems like we’re already doomed from the start. Another block in the road for us newbees. I am frustrated to tears.
What is the little change Jonathan is talking about?
Any help would be appreciated
Does this really make the case for going under an account of an established ppc guru managing many different accounts.
What are some of the best options?
Does anyone want to sell an account that is established?
Would it be worth it?
Wow…Thank You for sharing this!
Hey Perry,
This was absolutely fascinating to watch. It’s amazing what seemingly tiny changes do to make such a huge difference.
Thanks for sharing it!
Jonathan
Wow, Byron is a friend of mine and one of the sharpest affiliate marketers out there, so it’s very cool to see his work featured by Perry. It’s amazing to see how much lower the CPCs are for a mature Google account: what an uphill battle new PPC marketers face!
Here’s a tip — open a back-up/2nd account at Google now, put it under your MCC account and start driving a small $ amount of traffic. Maximize your CTR %s. Set it on auto-pilot and forget it for a couple months. Come back to it and you’ve got an account with “Google love” where you can now start driving real traffic at better CPCs.
Allen
Good video find Perry. What other factors do you think are in play there? I’ve also read that the CTR over the history of the aged account can also be a factor in QS (?)
This isn’t very encouraging for new players entering the game.
Byron, thanks for sharing. If anyone needs more evidence for keeping at it, you’ve certainly provided it.
The good news is that so many of our competitors are short-termers. They try. They fail. They walk away licking their [financial] wounds.
What this doesn’t tell us is what to do about this. It sounds like we’re stuck losing money if we are just starting out?
I’d have to agree with most of the opinions but I do think that the amount of spend has an impact. Within a couple of weeks, if the new campaign gets some good CTR, the price will go down, it always does if you have good quality landing pages and keep your CTR up.
It would be interesting to track the comparison through 90 and 120 days to see if the new campaign cost per click goes down and quality score goes up.
About the time of the first Google slap I noticed a difference in bid prices for similar keywords sent to different pages on the same web site. The only difference I could determine was that I had done some SEO on one page and not the other.
Good SEO work on a landing pages became part of my standard PPC strategies. Frankly getting a good quality start at the start of a campaign, makes a big difference on ad placement and distribution (is your ad even showing).
John Deck
I’m not surprised in the difference quality score makes, but I AM surprised at the difference 7 months makes. Didn’t Byron say that his account was only 8 months old? I thought it would take longer than that. Encouraging.