There are a number of things that affect your Quality Score in Adwords but one of the easiest ones to fix is frequently missed.
By adding this “one thing” to my landing page I managed to increase my Quality Score by 2.
What I’m talking about is a Privacy Policy.
I knew that Google looks for a Privacy Policy and that it could improve your Quality Score but I hadn’t realised it could have such an impact.
Today I created a new campaign for a new website. I noticed that my keyword Quality Scores were all showing a QS of 5. Now this is pretty low for me as a start point because I tend to write very targeted pages for each of my Adgroups.
When I examined the page to see what was wrong I noticed that I’d forgotten to link to the Privacy Policy.
So, I added the link and refreshed my Quality Scores.
I have to say I had quite a surprise to see them all jump up to 7.
I really would not have believed that adding the Privacy Policy link would have such an impact.
Clearly this was a brand new campaign. I don’t think adding a privacy policy to campaigns that already have click through history would have such a dramatic effect. It’s not something I can test at the moment since all my existing campaigns have this link. So I’d be interested in hearing anyone else’s experience.
Try adding a Privacy Policy link to you landing pages and tell me impact it has on your Quality Score. I would be very interested in your comments.
Hi! Does this really work?! I just added a link to my landing pages and I will now watch my quality score. Feel free contact me directly and we can discuss findings. I added the privacy policy to landing pages that have already been established and for ads/keywords that have already been established.
Hi Nicole,
Yes it works. The Privacy Policy is definitely one of the things that Google looks for on your Landing page when it is assessing the overall Quality Score.
However once you have an established campaign with click through history then the impact of landing page factors does drop as the CTR takes a much more front of stage impact on your Quality Score.
That said, even a small improvement can be enough to tip you over the edge into the next ad position for some of your keywords. A higher ad position will usually generate a better CTR and that means an improving Quality Score. Hey presto!
Every little bit helps
Mike
Hey Mike,
I came across your blog when I googled: “why does my quality score keep jumping from 5 to 1″.
The fact is, I’m at the end of my rope with Google PPC. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what is WRONG with my #%#$ site … and it’s driving me absolutely CRAZY!! I created a landing page on my domain at http://www.discountkitchenfaucetsguide.com and have spent the better part of two days trying to get it as clean as possible. Most of the outbound links go to either to good content on my blog (on the same domain) or to high PR sites. Several of the links are affiliate links but I’ve cloaked them with a php redirect which resides in separate directories on my hosted server. Yes, I made sure these folders were excluded from Google bots by putting the appropriate code in my robots.txt file. I also rebuilt and resubmitted my sitemap.xml file. I have both a privacy page and a Contact Me page. I’ve accepted Google’s suggested keywords based upon their keyword search tool when creating my campaigns. AND YET, STILL, my quality score drops from 5/10 to 1/10 after about 30 minutes of going live.
Is there a solution to this madness???????? I really don’t know what else to do.
Hi Jasper,
You are caught up in the Google slap. I’m afraid your site is exctly the ones that Google is after. Even though you’ve cloaked your affiliate links with PHP redirects they will have picked up on that trick already.
Simply put, review sites with links out to affiliates are no longer welcome by Google.
Sorry if that’s bad news to you but that is the facts as they stand at the moment.
Mike