Google Adwords: Not all bids are Created Equal

A common misunderstanding of Google Adwords is that ads show in accordance to how much you bid. Although this is a factor, there is much more to it.

Google is not stupid, they want to protect the results of their search to be relevant – this includes their paid advertising. To keep this side in check they created an algorithm to generate a things called quality score.

When you create your Google Adwords you select keywords, create ads for those keywords, then link those ads to a landing page. If you create an ad for “Shoes” by try to target the keyword “t-shirts”, these are not really related. So what Google does to make sure you don’t rank for this phrase is they give you a low quality score. That quality score is then times by your bid. So, if you have a quality score of 2 and place a bid for $1 your score is 2. If on the other hand your quality score is 10 and you place a bid of $1 your score is 10. The higher your score, the higher you ad will rank.

What if you create an ad for “T-shirts”, then target the keyword “T-shirts”, but link to a page talking about “Shoes”. Well, again, Google is not stupid, they will also give you a low quality score for this.

Now you have an ad for “T-shirts”, then target the keyword “T-shirts”, then link to a page talking about “T-shirts”. This is great! There are a few other factors to be aware of though. They will also look at your expected click through rate, your account performance in a specific geographical region and even performance of all the factors on the target devices.

Ultimately there is always room for improvement with your Google Adwords, so never stop tweaking because you never know how much money you can save.