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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

by 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.

by dhimes 8y ago

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.