Mastering your Quality Score is one of the most important ways to achieve success in your Google AdWords campaign. Since it was conceived, however, Quality Score has always brought a touch of uncertainty. Even knowing the factors involved did not always translate to results.
Now, the age of scientific digital marketing is in full swing. Marketers expect more clarity and data from their tools – even when the creator is none other than Google itself. In response to this, Google’s May update to Quality Score provides a number of new details.
New Status Column for Quality Score
In recent years, there have been three main Quality Score metrics to review with the AdWords interface: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. These will remain the cornerstone of AdWords going forward, but they are now even easier to use.
The new Status Column makes it simpler to check these metrics at a glance and scale them in your project. You can add these columns to keyword reports in a few clicks, giving you an even more comprehensive snapshot of your keywords’ current scores.
Historical Quality Score Data
Although there are many options for improving the performance of your account, it’s not always clear which changes yield best results. Now, AdWords has expanded its in-campaign analytics data so you can see how campaign changes over time translate to the bottom line.
You’ll now be able to review historical Quality Score and all its components per keyword.
There’s only one drawback: Historical data only goes back as far as January 22, 2016. Long-running campaigns won’t have their complete history reflected in AdWords. Still, savvy ad experts can use this information to continuously refine and optimize like never before.
One particularly useful application of this comes when you segment your keyword reports by day. In this view, the columns will reflect your quality scores at the end of each day, so you can see the end results of your campaign tweaks in a clear and granular manner.
Naturally, these new features are available at the Manager account level.
New Features Bring AdWords in Line with Analytics Best Practices
AdWords has always had a steep learning curve and the mystique of danger that goes along with it. There’s no question that some of the challenge is intentional – after all, Google makes plenty of revenue from ad campaigns that don’t produce any results.
Now, however, marketers have the opportunity to align AdWords with their overall analytics strategy in ways that were never possible before. On a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis, it will be possible to pinpoint the most effective AdWords campaign changes.
This is a game-changing innovation, so start using it right away.