December 7, 2008 by Jay Smith
Google has made some significant changes to how it figures out a site’s quality score, which could well have an effect on where your ads rank. Traditionally Click-Through Rate, or CTR, has been a major factoring the calculation of the quality score, since obviously adds with plenty of clicks are appealing to someone. However, there is one major flaw with this logic, namely that the ads ranking higher are obviously going to get more clicks and thus a higher click through rate. This can lead to a situation where lower placed ads find it harder and harder to compete.
Because of this, Google has had to find a fair way to calculate Quality score that isn’t distorted by the greater CTR of higher placed ads. What they are doing is basically normalising CTR data with a new algorithm so that positions on the screen are taken into account. They’ve always done this to an extent though now, they claim, their algorithm is able to do it a lot better.
The upshot is that, if your ads are currently mid-to-low ranked, you should be getting a much fairer deal in the upcoming months. Keep your quality score as high as you can and you actually have a chance of climbing closer to the top of the tree.
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