In his latest groundbreaking study to rock the PPC (Pay Per Click) world, Hazelhurst (2008) had the audacity to go one-on-one/mano-a-mano with the biggest company in the world today by market capitalisation - Google. At the heart of his polemic against the internet giant is the secret sauce of PPC itself - the Quality Score algorithm that Google guards with its life. Hot on the heels of the POR (Pyramid of Relevancy), the omnipotent model that has now become synonymous with all forms of internet marketing, Hazelhurst fired the opening shot in a passionate, heated critique of Quality Score:

“On three separate occasions this week, within three different accounts, I have discovered that keywords are being served with ads from different ad groups within the account. For example, I have an account for a company which sells both new and used cars. These are separated out into different campaigns within the account and split down for relevancy. I have then written ad text targeted to each individual ad group. I then performed a search for ‘used car’ and was served by the ad for ‘new car’ which is contained within a separate campaign. I would take you back to the Google explanation of quality score … which states ‘Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network’ but how can searching for a ‘used car’ and being served by an ad for ‘new car’ be considered relevant. Answer is that it’s not!”

In the same way that several heavyweight academics waded into the controversy that followed the unveiling of the POR model, various authors have also come forward to critically analyse Google’s Quality Score. Probably the most prominent point that has been made is as follows (NB: this is a real life example based on an actual PPC campaign):

“On Google, my ad text had the keyword repeated 3 or 4 times – once in the headline, once or twice in description line 1 and 2, and finally in the destination URL after the forward slash. The keyword belonged to a unique, distinct ad group with no other keyword themes within it. In addition, the landing page is highly relevant to the keyword … with the keyword mentioned numerous times across the page. Although the keyword is present all over the webpage, the landing page is in fact a picture or an image with no text for Google web crawlers, spiders, bots etc to pick up. Even though my landing page is highly relevant to the keyword and even though I am meeting all the criteria of a great Quality Score rating, the keywords is being inactivated for search and I’m forced to pay a CPC (cost per click) of £2.50 or £5.00 to get this keyword live on the search engine … despite the entire set up of the ad group, keywords, ad text and landing page being extremely relevant to the original search query. For a company like Google that, by its own admission, lives and dies by being ‘relevant’ this is a glaring oversight. According to Google, the only other alternative to paying £2.50 or £5.00 for each click is to raise the Quality Score rating. If anyone can tell me what I can do to make my keywords, ad text, ad groups and landing page any more relevant, I would love to hear it!”

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