Just when I thought I had the Google Quality Score cracked I discovered another layer of complexity!?!
Here’s the deal: I launched a new ppc campaign where I’m sending traffic to a site that my team has quietly been building up for some time now. This site has 100s of articles, PR, age, history, laser targeted landing pages with highly relevant content, the works!
Now I first launched this campaign on a new Google Account that I had started earlier this year. When I launched this campaign I was shocked to discover that most of my keywords were disabled with an OK to Poor quality score?!?
Now here’s the kicker: I paused this campaign, and launched it on my main Google account (one I’ve had since I’ve started), and ALL MY KEYWORDS BECOME ACTIVE. In fact, my quality score was Great and my min bids were all between 0.03-0.05!?!
So what happened? Honestly, at this point I’m not completely sure, but I have some theories:
- Account History : My main Google account has considerable more history than the original Google account I had launched my campaign on.
- Campaign/Keyword History : The new campaign I had launched was actually an upgraded version of a small existing campaign I had been running on my main account. So my site, and some of my keywords had some previous history on my main account. (Btw, I frequently start a small scale campaign for a niche or affiliate offer to test it out, before I go all out.)
Morale of the Story
Your account & campaign history seems to have quit a bit of weight on not just how much you’ll pay per click but ALSO your minimum bids.
Build up one Google account as much as you can, and if you hit the keywords limit and have cut out all the junk keywords from your account, call up Google and ask for an account increase.
You want to use the same account for as long as possible before you start a new one.
Just like a well aged domain name, having a well aged Google account is PRICELESS.
Amit,
Can you tell us what the limits are for AdWords? Is it x amount of keywords per campaign with a campaign limit as well?
Great post as usual
Peter
Amit,
This is the case with all new accounts.. I train a lot of newbies that open brand new accounts and they all experience this initially. It’s one of the first things I tell them.. I started doing this a year or two ago because every single one would ask me why they had so many ‘inactives’ in the beginning..
Depending on the volume they are putting up (and assuming the are setting them up properly quality wise), it can take a few days to a week and things will start turning around.
-Matt Levenhagen
P.S. Nice Blog Amit.. You definitely have a super mindset.
Isnt that one person can only have one google adword account? Are you telling me that I can have two google adword account?
Randy – Shhhhhhhhhh…
Make sure you use different IP’s if you’re going to be using separate accounts with separate corporations.
Hi Matt,
Great to hear from you, are you still on AWM? I have you and all the great people that were on AWM to thanks for my success, I learned a lot from all of you.
I was always curious about this history subject. So, does this mean that every time we get slapped by Google it puts a negative, black mark on our score card?
Is having no Google history (new account) like having no credit? You have to prove your self worthy first?
It’s getting so hard to test offers. How are you suppose to find out what works or converts if you keep getting slapped around every step of the way?
Thanks Adrian,
i look forward to your blog post.
-AnotherAmit
I couldn’t agree with you more Amit. I experienced exactly the same thing a few minutes ago. When we moved a campaign from a new account to our old account, the previously slapped campaign becomes active with great quality score and low minimum bid.