So, official Google advice and established practice – through testing and tracking quality scores, shows that deleting keywords that have never had an impression can help overall quality scores.
I dislike this practice. A lot.
I added those keywords to the PPC account because I thought they were relevant, I researched them through relevant sources and content. Some one some day may search on that keyword. I want them in, not matching to an expensive broad match.
Anyway, I’m getting deja-vu about moaning about this before.So I’ll get to my point, I do have one.
Recently I decided to trim the fat and downloaded all time stats into the editor and filtered by 0 impressions.
First campaign, brand specific products. No impressions but what’s this? Quality Score of 10/10. Damn I’m good.
I know a massive factor for QS is CTR. Maybe it’s because it’s a brand keyword, account history and only this account bidding on it.
But i also found 10/10 on non branded keywords. Over the 3 year run time, apparently no impressions. Some of the keywords haven’t been moved either in over a year – some have – so not all have been reset over this time. Still a 10/10 on all match types, 0 impressions. High budget cap.
I’m not moaning, well I am a little bit, just trying to figure out the logic.
Maybe no one else searches on them? Hello ad preview tool. Full spread result, not all DKI either, and oh there’s my advert. So it’s running. Top position.
Went one further and committed a cardinal sin, searched on main Google to see if an impression came through. Nothing through so far.
Although I typed the exact keyword into Google it could potentially be matching to another keyword in the account, one with more history and considered relevancy, or dare I say higher click bid? If this is the truth, why does my term have a 10/10 with no history? Or is its history linked to the broad match of another keyword type that it’s matching to?
Does history of a keyword outrank the quality score?
Is the system clever enough to think this keyword is similar to those with impressions so we know it’s really relevant, but let’s use the term we know Googlers use and keep this in the background, almost a foundation keyword.
Whatever the logic, beyond higher CPC’s – as cynical as I can be about Google – the bid prices are reasonably standard across the account and I believe their main goal is relevancy over it always being a cash cow.
But of course the conflicting question is, how can i bring myself to delete a 10/10 keyword?
Keyword analysis tells me it’s low volume but is clearly relevant. If I delete them to see what occurs, I can’t know for sure that a re-add would return a 10/10 score.
Plan is to increase bids ever so slightly. With no impression data I have no average ad position. Maybe this will shed some light – especially if the other terms start to gain less impressions.
Watch this space. I know it’s thrilling right. Be great to hear others thoughts on this.
Catchy title credit goes to @MC1985ftw
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