The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

Google recently announced changes to its quality score, so we’d like to share what this means for Clickable’s customers.

First, what is quality score and how does Clickable address it? Google’s quality score is a dynamic variable calculated for each of your search advertising keywords, and it helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google advertising network. Ads with a higher quality score result in greater clicks, a higher position and greater ROI. Clickable’s ActEngine, our search-marketing recommendation system which provides quantitative and qualitative best practices, addresses the variables you can control to improve your quality score.

What’s changed? Google recently emphasized the following changes to its quality score.

• Quality score is now more accurate -- because it is calculated at the time of each search query
• Keywords are no longer marked 'inactive for search' -- all keywords are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query
• 'First page bid estimates' replace 'minimum bids' in your account -- providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers

How is Clickable addressing these changes? First of all, our ActEngine team works continuously on improving our recommendations, and that includes adapting quickly to changes like this.

• Foremost, our recommendations will continue performing correctly.
• Second, we will incorporate in our recommendations the "First page bid estimates" shortly after they're activited in the Google API (the connection through which Clickable manages your Google accounts). In the meantime, we'll continue to use our "minimum bids" recommendations to ensure your profitable keywords remain active.
• We'll monitor Google's transition away from marking keywords "inactive for search." In the meantime, we'll continue to alert you of any inactive keywords.
• As for dynamic quality scores, generated at the time of each search, the ActEngine will continue to monitor your performance over time and identify patterns and opportunities where you can fine-tune and improve for greater profitability.

We'll let you know if there are any other material udpates in this Google transition. As always, please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.