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There's a subtle point here that I want to emphasize, as it's counter to their "Lesson #2: Focus on page quality and CTR when doing paid tests." The best way I

by dhimes 8y ago

There's a subtle point here that I want to emphasize, as it's counter to their "Lesson #2: Focus on page quality and CTR when doing paid tests." The best way I found to qualify leads was, for things I was charging money for, to put in the price. That way people didn't click if they were looking for free. This actually worked pretty well. The problem was that this means my ads were showing and not getting clicked. This reduced my quality score (although, in my mind, it provided a better experience for the user because they weren't wasting time going to a site that they did not want). So Google's Quality Score is "quality" as measured from their point of view (high click/view), not yours nor necessarily your customers.

nostrademons 8y ago
It's [supposed to be] quality as measured from their users' point of view, which may be a large superset of your customers. If the user wanted a free code snippet to copy & paste and they get an ad with a price in it, that's a bad result, even if they never click on it; that space on the page could've been devoted to a link that they would actually visit. It's good (from the users' POV) for that ad to never get shown again on that query, because it makes their results more relevant. The right solution here is to refine your target market segmentation & keywords so that you're buying ads on searches that only people in your target market make. Then you get a good CTR & quality score and a good conversion rate. Optimize the funnel all the way down to the searcher.
- dhimes 8y ago
  That might be the idea, but my quality score goes up if the user clicks, even if it's not what they want- and Google gets paid. My quality score goes down if I am forthcoming and pre-qualify the clicks. (There are probably more ways to do this than price.) If the user doesn't use the word "free" in the search then there's no way to know a priori that they wanted free. By me putting a price in my ad, I am making the user's experience of the search page better by not leading them astray. Here's an example: Suppose somebody searched "fix my carburetor." The likely return will have services that fix carburetor for you, youtube videos showing you how, and for-pay pdf instructions. Let's say I'm selling the for-pay pdf instructions. How am I supposed to exclude my page? I could limit my keywords to "fix my carburetor pdf for sale" and hope someone types it into the search box, but I find that unreasonable. Maybe you can walk me through how I'm wrong. But I submit that Google is working on the hypothesis that more clicks = better user experience, and I believe that hypothesis is false.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Not wrong, just incomplete. It's better for you to put a price on the ad than not put the price on the ad and get the bogus click. However, it'd be even better to fix the targeting & keywords and not show the user the ad in the first place if they're not going to click. Google's trying to align your incentives with its users; after all, you're the only one who knows your business well enough to understand if there're subtle differences between what your prospective customers search for vs. what window-shoppers in your industry shop for. There are often other keywords that can indicate purchasing intent - just thinking back to my own search habits, "buy", "product", "cost", "pricing", "comparison", etc. And it's true that more clicks doesn't always = better user experience, but it's also true that more clicks in the absence of other information usually = better user experience. Google works off the data it has - for many cases, that's only CTR, bounce rate, and time on site. I suspect (I don't have any inside information how Ads Quality works) that when they have information about conversions - like when you've chosen to link your Google Analytics account with AdWords and set up conversion funnels in the former - they use that information too for determining quality score.
  - exclusiv 8y ago
    I agree with you. I always try to disqualify traffic with price. Many people optimize for CTR but that's not usually good when you're doing leads and/or sales. It's easy to write ads that get higher CTR. Then your CPC will usually go down but that doesn't mean you'll get a higher ROI. So best to focus on CPA not CTR.
    - igordebatur 8y ago
      Good point, we now have the target CPL we use to qualify paid ads hypotheses.
- igordebatur 8y ago
  Agree on that, the problem was about target market segmentation & keywords. The insight is that we shouldn't focus on a broad market (and test hypotheses for different product parts separately).
igordebatur 8y ago
That's a good point. We didn't trigger that mechanic because we have a Free plan. However, by doing that we weren't targeting our "ideal customer" which is definitely a paid one. On the other hand, if we would lower the CTR by defining the price, we would have higher CPCs or lowered the number of impressions due to a low Quality Score. Even if we WOULD get lower CPLs, that won't bring ROI since users still won't activate on our platform. The problem wasn't about Google Search Ads settings: we hired skilled SEMs and everything. The problem was about the product-market fit understanding and segmenting potential customers based on related value props and keywords.
- dhimes 8y ago
  Got it. Great piece, by the way.

by dhimes 8y ago

nostrademons 8y ago

It's [supposed to be] quality as measured from their users' point of view, which may be a large superset of your customers. If the user wanted a free code snippet to copy & paste and they get an ad with a price in it, that's a bad result, even if they never click on it; that space on the page could've been devoted to a link that they would actually visit. It's good (from the users' POV) for that ad to never get shown again on that query, because it makes their results more relevant. The right solution here is to refine your target market segmentation & keywords so that you're buying ads on searches that only people in your target market make. Then you get a good CTR & quality score and a good conversion rate. Optimize the funnel all the way down to the searcher.

dhimes 8y ago
That might be the idea, but my quality score goes up if the user clicks, even if it's not what they want- and Google gets paid. My quality score goes down if I am forthcoming and pre-qualify the clicks. (There are probably more ways to do this than price.) If the user doesn't use the word "free" in the search then there's no way to know a priori that they wanted free. By me putting a price in my ad, I am making the user's experience of the search page better by not leading them astray. Here's an example: Suppose somebody searched "fix my carburetor." The likely return will have services that fix carburetor for you, youtube videos showing you how, and for-pay pdf instructions. Let's say I'm selling the for-pay pdf instructions. How am I supposed to exclude my page? I could limit my keywords to "fix my carburetor pdf for sale" and hope someone types it into the search box, but I find that unreasonable. Maybe you can walk me through how I'm wrong. But I submit that Google is working on the hypothesis that more clicks = better user experience, and I believe that hypothesis is false.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Not wrong, just incomplete. It's better for you to put a price on the ad than not put the price on the ad and get the bogus click. However, it'd be even better to fix the targeting & keywords and not show the user the ad in the first place if they're not going to click. Google's trying to align your incentives with its users; after all, you're the only one who knows your business well enough to understand if there're subtle differences between what your prospective customers search for vs. what window-shoppers in your industry shop for. There are often other keywords that can indicate purchasing intent - just thinking back to my own search habits, "buy", "product", "cost", "pricing", "comparison", etc. And it's true that more clicks doesn't always = better user experience, but it's also true that more clicks in the absence of other information usually = better user experience. Google works off the data it has - for many cases, that's only CTR, bounce rate, and time on site. I suspect (I don't have any inside information how Ads Quality works) that when they have information about conversions - like when you've chosen to link your Google Analytics account with AdWords and set up conversion funnels in the former - they use that information too for determining quality score.
- exclusiv 8y ago
  I agree with you. I always try to disqualify traffic with price. Many people optimize for CTR but that's not usually good when you're doing leads and/or sales. It's easy to write ads that get higher CTR. Then your CPC will usually go down but that doesn't mean you'll get a higher ROI. So best to focus on CPA not CTR.
  - igordebatur 8y ago
    Good point, we now have the target CPL we use to qualify paid ads hypotheses.
igordebatur 8y ago
Agree on that, the problem was about target market segmentation & keywords. The insight is that we shouldn't focus on a broad market (and test hypotheses for different product parts separately).

igordebatur 8y ago

That's a good point. We didn't trigger that mechanic because we have a Free plan. However, by doing that we weren't targeting our "ideal customer" which is definitely a paid one. On the other hand, if we would lower the CTR by defining the price, we would have higher CPCs or lowered the number of impressions due to a low Quality Score. Even if we WOULD get lower CPLs, that won't bring ROI since users still won't activate on our platform. The problem wasn't about Google Search Ads settings: we hired skilled SEMs and everything. The problem was about the product-market fit understanding and segmenting potential customers based on related value props and keywords.

dhimes 8y ago
Got it. Great piece, by the way.