What is a quality score?
Microsoft Advertising provides a quality score for each of your keywords to help you understand both the relevance of your keywords to search users' queries and the degree to which your ads are eligible to be displayed in response to these queries. You can use your quality score to determine the best ways to optimize your keywords, ads, and landing pages to help improve your ROI.
Quality scores are based on three performance measures:
- Expected click-through rate
- Ad relevance
- Landing page experience
At what level is the quality score assigned?The quality score is assigned to each keyword at the search match-type level. For example, a keyword that has both the exact and phrase match types selected will have two quality scores, one for exact match and one for phrase match.
What does it mean if a keyword doesn't have a quality score?
If your ad group is new, there might not be enough data to calculate a quality score. As soon as your ad receives one impression for a keyword, a quality score can be calculated for that keyword. However, you might not see that quality score updated in your account right away.
Does landing page load time affect the quality score?
Microsoft Advertising considers your landing page load time as part of your landing page experience. It's a good best practice to make sure that your pages load quickly. Pages that load slowly might cause potential customers to abandon your site, which will lower your conversion rate.
How is the expected click-through rate score calculated?The expected click-through rate score is a comparison of the click-through rate (CTR) of a keyword in your campaign with the average CTR of that keyword across the marketplace. The keyword CTR is normalized for ad position; that is, Microsoft Advertising takes into account how ad position affects CTR when it calculates quality score.
Can I improve my quality score by raising my keyword bid?No. Although your bid amount can affect ad position, it has no effect on your quality score.
When Microsoft Advertising calculates the quality score, the raw click-through rate (CTR) is not used because it would give an advantage to those ads in higher positions. Instead, we "normalize" the CTR to account for the ad's position and provide a more fair and accurate assessment of keyword and ad performance.
Can the organization of my ad groups affect the quality score?Yes, it can. You'll want to create a separate ad group for each important product or service you offer. For example, if you are a tea retailer, your site might have offerings in several key categories, such as green tea, Darjeeling tea, and black tea. Creating ad groups for such narrowly defined groups of products or services enables you to use ads and landing pages that contain highly relevant keywords. By improving the relevance of ads and landing pages, you can improve the quality score.
I followed your recommendations, but my quality score hasn't improved. What else can I try?Check to see which of the three performance indicators—expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience—are
Poor, and then take the appropriate action to improve those scores.
If all three scores are
No problem, you'll want to focus on raising your expected click-through rate score from
Poor to
Good by refining your ad copy.
It can take some experimentation with ad copy to determine what achieves a good click-through rate.