What is Ad Quality Score?

An ad quality score, often just called a quality score, is a number assigned by Google.com to paid advertisements in a hybrid auction that determines each advertisement’s rank on a search engine results page. While it is called a quality index by Yahoo!, the idea is the same. A quality score for a particular advertisement reflects a number of things including the advertisement’s past click through rate, the ad’s landing page relevance, keyword relevance, and many other factors that have to do with Google’s ranking algorithms. This dynamic variable is important because it not only influences the page rank of a paid inclusion ad on search engine results pages, but also influences, partially, the bid price of the keywords used by the advertisement. The higher an advertisement’s quality score, the lower the keyword bid prices will be and the higher the advertisement’s page rank will be.

There are four different parts to a quality score that are formulated in different ways. The four parts of the ad quality score are minimum bid, ad position, keyword-targeted ad’s eligibility and whether an ad will appear on a page or not. These formulae include:

Minimum Bid Formula
The click through rates of the advertisement in the past.
The relevance of the keywords used on the advertisement to the group the advertisement belongs to.
The quality of the advertisement landing page.
The account history, which is measured by click through rates and the keywords used.
Other relevant factors to Google.com or whichever search engine is being used to get a quality score.

Ad Position Formula
The past documentation of the advertisement’s click through rates, as well as the matched keywords on Google.com.
The relevance of the keywords and the advertisement to the keyword query currently being submitted by a user.
The account history the advertisement has with Google.com, which includes past click through rates, and keywords used.
Other relevant factors which Google.com determines differently for each advertisement.

Keyword-Targeted Ad’s Eligibility Formula
The advertisement’s past performance on Google.com as well as other search engines.
The relevancy of the advertisement and the advertisement’s keywords not only to the advertisement, but to other advertisements in the particular ad group.
The quality of the advertisement’s landing page.
Other factors deemed relevant by Google.com.

Ad Appearance Determination Formula
The quality of the advertisement landing page.

The other factors deemed relevant by Google when determining ad quality scores can be as simple as one or two of the other hundreds of algorithms that Google uses to rank web pages, or it can be two dozen. It all depends on how popular the keywords already are and the history of the web page with Google. The ad quality score makes it possible for web pages to be eligible to participate in bidding as well. In all, the higher the ad quality score of a web page, the easier it is for that web page to be listed prominently on a search engine results page, as well as bidding for high-traffic keywords.

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