Facts, Fiction and views by valuepitchers

Recently Google announced a landing page quality update
They followed it up with answers to questions by advertisers

I went back to Quality Score to find out the nuances of it and this is what I dug out.

Firstly there are 2 types of Quality Scores. For easier understanding lets call them QS A and QS B.
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=49174

For Search Network:

Quality Score A - Used to determine the minimum bids for keywords on the search network
Quality Score A = (keyword's CTR, ad text relevance, keyword relevance, landing page relevance)


Quality Score B - Used to determine the actual cost per click for your keyword and the ranking
Quality Score B = (keyword's CTR, ad text relevance, keyword's relevance in relation to a user's search query)


Content Network:

No Quality Score A as there are no minimum bids

Quality Score B for Ad Ranking
Quality Score B = (max CPC, ad performance history on the site and similar sites, relevance of the landing page)

Google recently incorporated landing page quality into its Quality Score A and NOT Quality Score B.

So can a page that has a high CTR or conversion rate be considered a poor quality landing page?
Yes. The landing page quality analysis does not consider the CTR, any conversion tracking or Google Analytics data.
It takes into account the actual content and relevance of your landing page to a user.
But CTR is an important factor for ranking, pricing AND minimum bid calculation.

EVERYTHING about Quality Score can be found here

Google's definition of Max. CPC:

Maximum Cost-Per-Click

You choose the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) you are willing to pay. Our Discounter automatically reduces this amount so that the actual CPC you are charged is just one cent more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.

So can the average CPC ever be more than the maximum CPC?

Google seems to think so:


Sergey are you reading this?