Hacking Google PPC Quality Score

This is only part 1 of this article that I am writing. I am doing a ton of testing to verify long-term implications, because if this is truly the case, then there are some pretty serious implications.

I've been doing PPC since around 2000 when Google Adwords launched. Interestingly enough, the same time the data mining/collecting database coined as the Google Toolbar was also launched. So I have been responsible for millions of dollars and pound in spends on Google, keeping under Google's radar for many reasons.

I spent the best part of the last 72 hours doing some testing provoked by boredom and messing around with some free rebate cash from Google the other night. What I found was a little disturbing.

Google's recent Quality Score seems to be "hackable" from a very novice level. I'm wondering if this has been discovered anywhere else, but I have been unable to find any "real evidence" of this. So despite the potential repercussions, I'm calling them out. I hope they prove me wrong because this may cause many of my past and current clients to ask some serious questions that I cannot answer...and I don't like to not be able to answer questions, that's why I'm a data miner, mathematician, and have strived to become an expert in biometrics...I want conclusive answers...not theories, best guesses, unsubstantiated claims based on propaganda and hearsay, or basic bull****.


What I have observed in a large mix of PPC accounts (old, new, large, small, UK, US, great conversion rates and poor conversion rates, and many other variables) is that you can actually manipulate Google's PPC algo and get a Great Quality Score ranking every time you add a new keyword with the correct initial settings. Of course if you don't do it right, you can end up getting a Poor keyword level Quality Rating before you ever activate the campaign, adgroup or keyword , and this Quality Rating cannot be changed or adjusted to have google revisit the keyword and your bid and budget settings and change your Quality Grade...Why???

Think about what it takes to get a keyword ranking on PPC in the coveted top 3 positions that then become syndicated across Google's "Partner Network" that includes AOL (6% conversions - average - 2x the industry average), Netscape, Ask, and many other popular search engines powered by Google. Answer? More money.

The more shocking part is that you can delete the keyword , the adgroup holding the keyword , or the entire campaign, but as soon as you create a new campaign, or an adgroup within an existing campaign, or just add the keyword into existing adgroup thinking that you'll get a fresh look from google and get the Good or Great Quality Rating the keyword Quality Rating comes back the same.

No matter if you enter the exact settings from the campaign awarded the Great Score (to keep thing equal I used duplicate budgets, existing conversion ratios and product/service offerings, as well as the exact same ads, adverts, landing pages and so on), the keyword word will carry the previous Quality Rating with it. It also works in reverse as well.

I did everything I mentioned above, but I adjust the minimum campaign level CPC default and the budget to the settings that got a Poor Quality rating on the other account, but that made no difference either. I take the account and keyword with the Great Quality rating and start altering every possible influencing factor; no keyword in the advert or URL, all of these test point to Stickyeyes.com home page whether it was the destination page or display URL. I moved the keyword into a terrible adgroup, changed adverts, changed landing page, I even canceled the damn thing, logged out and activated an IP cloaker. I logged back into the account (which I had completely deleted at this point because I tried every other scenario) then uploaded a huge account with 15 campaigns, 150 adgroups and over 20,000 keyword's.

I picked one out randomly and added the keyword (oh, by the way, the keyword was 'mesothelioma attorney'), and set the budget to £5 and the minimum CPC default to 0.01 and the damn thing came back with the same Grade.

Then I went to an entirely different account that I had never introduced this keyword into, took the exact same huge account with everything being identical and loaded it into this fresh account setting the budget to £500 daily and £50 minimum CPC default and the Quality Rating was Poor I have a long list of tests that I want to see the results for, some are short term and others are potentially long term depending on whether Google revisits or runs it through an auto-editor the next day and if it restores the correct Quality Rating based on the new settings, or they come back eventually, but only with time and good ctr.

Landing page content is supposed to factor into the Quality Rating as well, Of course I used the same URL and landing page (Stickyeyes) for every test. But I imagine that is something that plays into the PPC algo as time passes and Google collects, stores and compares that information ( I.e Time in site, landing page bounce rates back into the search result and into another site within the same set of results, high conversions, etc.)

As I mentioned I am doing further large-scale testing and will post more as it comes in.

If you have any conclusive information regarding please contact me.

GaryTheScubaGuy

Sorry for not answering your question, but you gave another evidence that Google quality score policy is way too complicated and non-transparent.

It is not acceptable that marketeers have to spend days learning how Google artificial "pseudo quality" system works. Advertisers are Google customers. Google should make the system as easy to use as the Google search engine is.

Jean-Luc

Gary my friend I did that test last week and the previous week and had the exact same results but also gary you understand posting this you are going to hurt both of our bank accounts ... Ill post my results in a bit once I write teh article , give me an hour or 2 , but gary your killing me posting this.... and by the way you worded that whole post and your others I can tell we are in teh same business. so if you post your results I suppose ill post mine even though we basically did the exact same test and mine worked perfectly and I got around every aspect of quality , not 100 percent but extremely better off than I was... still not sure why you are telling this secret ....... my money gary

O and let me help rephrase your title, its not hacking, Google is very smart in how they run their business. They NEVER tell you no, unless it is a really Big NONO, they just make an update or program than makes it really REALLY difficult to accomplish what we are trying to do, but normally their is always a way around it if you work hard enough. they make us, the marketers figure it out, and if we do good for us , we are back on their page, but then a month later they will do the same thing again and you need to rework your stuff again, its a love / hate relationship, but they never say you cant do this or give you direct answers to your problems, they make us figure it out, and if we put the time into it then we can appear back into their results, this is how I view it, let me know if you feel the same and if you had had the same instances in promoting your offers, and that attorney one converts pretty well for myself and has a pretty nice payout

Interesting stuff. I'm just wondering how long you have to sustain the top positions before doing any other adjustments? e.g. having a ctr of 20% over three days?

Cshermgo,

When you manipulate the results of a program, that is hacking.

GaryTheScubaGuy

You need to monitor it daily and use day-parting and keyword weighting based on your top converting time frames.

Your CTR really isn't the issue...you ROI is the metric and of 30+ clients I monitor the CPV runs between £1 and £270. One branded account I have had a 44.7% conversion to sale ratio last month. Everything depends on the cost of the client versus the return the client generates.

To answer your specific question; I maintain 3rd position on some to remain in Google's network, others I test convert better doing bid gapping to the 4-5 position on Google because at a higher position the CPC average drives up the cost beyond the target CPA.

I use day-parting combined with advanced bidding and keyword weighting to cover the gaps during peak conversion hours by setting my default cpc to the average CPC for each keyword at the third position, I set position preference to 3-10, then turn up the kw weight to 175% during the peak times, and down to 50% during the night. From there I have 4 guys doing analytics and tearing campaigns apart to the granular level to identify the above metric at a keyword level. Half of our clients have 30k+ keywords to manage.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you can manage your account at different levels. The time you put in is at least worth double back.

Learn advanced bidding and become an analysts, or hire one.

GaryTheScubaGuy

Isn't CTR indirectly related? I have a client in the finance industry. On many keywords I introduce to adwords, the CPC is way beyond the target CPA. But if I pay over the odds to reach top position, this will impact the CTR (short run), which will indirectly impact the CPC and influence the ROI (long run). This is the only way I know how to introduce high CPC keywords. Introducing keywords at positions 8-10, there's a big risk that it will eventually land on page 2.

BTW what is keyword weighting? Is it having a bigger weight on the converting keywords? Can you tell me what CPV is?



Yes, always learning. Your post opens up many gaps in my knowledge

cpv = cost per view same as impression, and google really does not care about ctr now, I have some keywords says min bid of 50 cents, I bed 50 cents get on average a 20 - 40 percent ctr for this specific ad group but after 2 weeks It still does not drop. I am not getting charged that much but even if I drop my bid to closer to what I am getting charged it is still deemed not quality. CTR does not matter because it can be manipulated too easily. by the exact method you said of just bidding high and then dropping it. And to whomever said google needs to make it completely simple, if they did that and laid everything out for you to do everybody would be deemed quality because everyone would know the answer and it wouldnt work, google does not tell you they let you figure it out for yourself and if you can then good but if not then they really do not care.