Author Topic: tanking QS on adwords  (Read 8846 times)

seoboy

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tanking QS on adwords
« on: November 22, 2010, 01:58:30 AM »
howdy all.  newly joined, via littleman's recommendation...

anywho, wanted to run something by the community. 

i'm running a fairly large ppc campaign -- 7 figures/year in budget on adwords alone.  all the links are running through an affiliate network, so they are redirects.  the campaign was migrated from another account -- that account was running direct (no redirects).  long story.  the new account was launched a few months back.

things have been humming along just fine until the last 48 hours.  logged into the account this AM and saw that almost all my QS have been crushed.  i have historical data -- last data was on the 19th (2 days ago) and most scores were in the 7-8 range.  now almost everything is 3-4.  this obviously sucks because CPC rates are even higher now.  everything just went sideways, and i have no idea why.

some of my core brand-related kws are still rating ok -- 8-10, but even brand terms with more generic secondary modifiers like "coupons" are now sucking wind (the LPs dont have "coupon" text on them, but that wasn't hurting me before as most kws were still running 7-8 QS).

i have various theories as to what could be causing it, but i'm really curious if it's just me, or if it's something more nefarious like an algo change for QS.  is it just me, or has anyone else seen a dramatic shift in their QS recently? 

-seoboy



seoboy

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2010, 05:12:14 AM »
just a followup - i'm seeing folks complaining about this in various places, so it seems i'm not alone. 

one thing i'm wondering, though, is whether this is universal...or is it specifically related to the fact that my urls are running through affiliate-program redirects...  if it's the redirects, it's possibly remediable.  but if it's something else, there's probably not a point in fiddling with things too much...

so...
  • anyone else running traffic through affiliate urls who has seen a similar QS crash? 
  • anyone with a direct-linked adwords campaign seeing a QS crash?

-seoboy

Gurtie

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2010, 10:27:17 AM »
just checked with our ppc guys and yes, we've seen some unexplained QS drops down to about half what they were on friday.

There is no affiliate stuff, so unless its co-incidence it's not aff related.

We're tending to see heavier drops in some industries, but its not entirely consistent. For example we have a lot of drops in (good quality) finance, which I thought might tie in with the aff issue, but some of our finance stuff is still within its normal range.

*possibly* load speed related? 

We're in the UK btw. They're on the phone to the account manager now but we'll only get a standard answer, we don't spend enough for genuine help.

Adam C

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2010, 02:13:08 PM »
seeing that here too.

30% loss in adwords traffic on one site.  Others seemingly not effected despite QS drop. 

No aff redirect but there is a 3rd party tracking redirect.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2010, 02:15:45 PM by Adam C »

Gurtie

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2010, 02:25:11 PM »
mmm. the only site we have still got a decent number of 10's on tracks through G Analytics.

The others use third party tracking, but they haven't *all* dropped dramatically....

Gurtie

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2010, 04:52:34 PM »

littleman

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2010, 05:13:45 PM »
Could this be as simple as a Holiday tweak to max out earnings?

seoboy

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2010, 05:42:07 PM »
@gurtie, thanks for the link.  that makes me feel a bit better.  i was seeing posts from back in october, but nothing recent enough to report a trend -- until that link.  i guess no one manages their ppc accounts on the weekends... ;)

@little, could be a case of left hand (acct services) not knowing what right hand (engineering) is doing.  happens pretty often at G, but i guess that's to be expected when your engineers outnumber your services folks like 9000 to 1.  in any event, there's probably one thing to be learned from all this: buy GOOG.

Gurtie

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2010, 08:25:36 PM »
Could this be as simple as a Holiday tweak to max out earnings?

now I didn't say that because I thought it was me being paranoid. It is about that time though, isn't it?

Cowley

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2010, 03:39:14 PM »
I've seen a couple of big newish (4 weeks or so) accounts average QS move from 3 to 7 over the last week or so.  Anybody else seen any changes?

jimbanks

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Re: tanking QS on adwords
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2010, 04:28:52 PM »
I'd figure the hand edit is still a factor in all of the stuff that seems weird.

Usually QS doesn't just change for no reason.

It can be to do with historical stuff in the account (not campaign or adgroup), and that can be good or bad and paused or live.

It can be to do with what the hand edit found.

If you add in or take away it will all have a cause and effect.

I don't think a holiday tweak exists, but clearly in the holiday period it tends to be busier with a lot more activity, and in many cases QS for you is also measured against competitors, so if they have sorted their accounts out that might have a negative effect on you.

What impact have you seen in terms of overall ROI and ECPC? I used to see big up and down swings in QS have little or no positive or negative impact.

If (as you should be) you are constantly tweaking your landing pages and doing split tests that will have an impact. Page load times will have an impact (are you measuring those?)

More Google pixie dust stuff to make us paranoid!