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Is Google Ads Quality Score just a Scam/Distraction? Is GA worth it?
Wondering if anyone has any advice on Google Ads Quality Score and whether my problems are unique…
I’m finding that Google’s Quality Score seems to be a complete crapshoot.
There are keywords I’m bidding on where I have a 25%+ CTR, where the keyword is exact match (so it isn’t triggering irrelevant queries), where the keyword is used in the ad, used in the landing page, and the landing page not only contains original, relevant content (and is ‘transparent’ because it contains contact details etc) but also scores a 90%+ PageSpeed Insights score for mobile and desktop…
…and Google is giving me a 2/10 Quality Score and saying I have low ‘expected CTR’ and low ‘landing page experience’.
So I’m getting almost no impression share due to low ad rank.
I’ve spent *many* hours watching videos, reading blogs, going through courses etc and cannot for the life of me find out what is the reason I’m getting low quality scores.
Listening to the experts, improving quality score seems like a straightforward (although sometimes tedious) process.
My experience, though, is that I’ve implemented just about every optimisation process that I’m aware of (STAGs, looking at search query report in Ads and Analytics and ‘negging out’ keywords, using relevant ad extensions, improving my core web vitals etc)…and my quality score is not only low but has actually continued to drop.
(And, no, I’m not advertising in a niche that Google is known to suppress quality scores for)
At this point, I’ve also spoken to my ads manager and a different Google support agent.
They try and encourage me to do things like increase bids (even though my bids aren’t low AND my reports shows the thing suppressing my impressions is low ad rank caused by low quality score and not low CPC bids), use a particular smart bidding strategy, add less relevant keywords and put them on broad match, turn on ‘auto recommendations’ etc…all things which will obviously increase the amount I’m paying to Google but won’t affect my quality score for the relevant keywords I’m trying to bid on.When I ask them straight why my quality score is low for a particular keyword and how I can improve it, they haven’t got an answer.
I’m starting to wonder if I should simply ignore quality score altogether and optimise by looking at the other metrics (making appropriate bid adjustments etc) and just hope it eventually corrects itself (although getting the impressions will take months)…or if the Google Ads system is fundamentally broken and I should expect that any keyword I add is a quality score crapshoot (i.e. regardless of whether it matches the *actual* intent of a searcher, is contained in the ad and the landing page…it may trigger a low quality score and then be VERY expensive)?