Ad and Site Quality

Question 1

Check and understand Quality Score

Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your

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ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad.

Question 2

Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your

Answer 2

ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. You can find out your Quality Score for any of your keywords.

Question 3

Checking your Quality Score

You can check your Quality Score by looking within your

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Keywords tab. There are a couple ways to check your Quality Score, as shown below.

Question 4

Run a keyword diagnosis:

Click the Campaigns tab at the top.
Select the Keywords tab.
Click the white ......

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speech bubble Ad disapproval bubble next to any keyword’s status to see details about that keyword’s Quality Score. You’ll be able to see ratings for expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

Question 5

Understanding landing page experience

Landing page experience refers to how good we think someone’s experience will be when they get to your

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landing page (the web page they end up on after clicking your ad).

Question 6

You can improve your landing page experience by:

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providing relevant, useful, and original content,
promoting transparency and fostering trustworthiness on your site (for example, by explaining your products or services before asking visitors to fill out forms sharing their own information), and
making it easy for customers to navigate your site (including on mobile sites).

Question 7

Understanding landing page experience - Excluding Landing Pages from Review

By default, the AdWords system reviews advertised landing pages to assess

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to assess landing page experience.

Question 8

Understanding landing page experience - Excluding Landing Pages from Review

If you don’t want some of your landing pages to be reviewed, you can follow the steps below to restrict the AdWords system from visiting those pages. However, if you do this, you may end up with a significant

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drop in Quality Score because we won’t have as much information to determine your landing page experience and relevance.

This means your ads may show far less often unless you significantly increase your maximum cost-per-click (in shorthand, your bid). Even with higher bids, however, it is unlikely your ads would show very often and may not even show at all. Also note that if you restrict access to your entire site, or if you restrict access to so many of your landing pages that it makes it difficult for the AdWords system to meaningfully review your account, your site will be suspended.

Question 9

Understanding landing page experience - Excluding Landing Pages from Review

While we strongly recommend against restricting our system’s automatic review of your landing pages, you can edit your site’s

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site’s robots.txt file as shown below to avoid a review.

To prevent the AdWords system from accessing your entire site, add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /shopping_cart/

Question 10

The AdWords system will also visit your landing page to evaluate your site as viewed by iPhones and other

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and other mobile devices with full browsers.

Question 11

Currently, AdWords uses the following

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HTTP User-Agent header to identify AdWords mobile visits:

AdsBot-Google-Mobile (+http://www.google.com/mobile/adsbot.html) Mozilla (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3 0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari

If you have a distinct, mobile-optimized version of your site, we recommend you configure your server to show the mobile-optimized site when the AdWords mobile User-Agent is detected.

Question 12

When we review landing pages, we sometimes come across pages that don’t follow our Advertising Policies. For example, if your landing page happens to contain malware (like a virus), that’s a pretty bad landing page. Rather than giving you a “Below average” landing page experience status, you won’t

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get a score at all. Instead, you’ll see “Not applicable” as your landing page experience status, and any keywords or ads pointing to that website will get a “Site suspended” status. This status means that your website can’t be advertised with AdWords because it doesn’t follow one or more of our site policies.

Question 13

Reaching mobile customers using an HTML website

Regardless of whether you have a mobile website, AdWords will let you show text ads to customers using Google Search on a high-end mobile device, like an

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an iPhone or Android phone. These “smart phones” have a full Internet browser (like a desktop computer), so a customer who clicks your text ad from the search results page can visit your standard website.

Question 14

Keep in mind

If you opt in, make sure that your landing page doesn’t contain

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contain Flash content. Flash is currently not supported on iPhones or iPads, and has only limited support on Android and other high-end mobile devices. If our system detects that your landing page has lots of Flash content, we’ll automatically limit your ads from running on high-end mobile devices.

Question 15

Best practices for designing a mobile site

When creating a mobile website, you’ll want to keep in mind a few strategies that best take advantage of the

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small size of mobile screens and the behavior of mobile users. These strategies can help make sure your mobile site is a great experience for customers and direct them to take the desired actions on your site.

Question 16

Best practices for designing a mobile site

3. 4.

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1. Keep it quick
2. Make it easy to buy something or contact you
3. Simplify navigation
4. Help people find and get to your local sites

Question 17

Best practices for designing a mobile site Part 1

1. Keep it quick
2. Make it easy to buy something or contact you

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1. Keep it quickReduce large blocks of text and use bullet points.
   Compress images to keep them small for faster site loading.
2. Make it easy to buy something or contact youReduce the number of steps needed to complete a transaction.
   Keep forms short, with the fewest number of fields possible.
   Use check boxes, lists, and scroll menus to make data entry easier.
   Use click-to-call functionality for all phone numbers.

Question 18

Best practices for designing a mobile site Part 2

3. Simplify navigation
4. Help people find and get to your local sites

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Simplify navigation

Minimize scrolling and keep it vertical only.
Use a clear hierarchy in menus and avoid rollovers.
Help customers navigate between levels with clear back and home buttons.
Use seven links or fewer per page of navigation.

Help people find and get to your local sites

Have your address or store locator on the landing page.
Include maps and directions. Use GPS to personalise when possible.
Allow customers to check stock at nearby stores.
Make sure your mobile website is being indexed for web search.

Question 19

Designing sites for WAP mobile phones

WAP-friendly mobile websites can be written in a few different markup languages, including

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XHTML, CHTML, and WML. Each language is compatible with different mobile devices.

Question 20

About invalid traffic

Invalid traffic refers to clicks and impressions on AdWords ads that we suspect aren’t the result of

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of genuine customer interest. Examples of invalid traffic include clicks and impressions performed by automated tools, as well as accidental clicks – for instance, if someone double clicks your ad. We don’t charge you for invalid clicks and impressions because we think they have little or no value

Question 21

Types of invalid traffic

What are some types of clicks and impressions that we consider to be invalid:

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Accidental clicks that provide no value, such as the second click of a double-click
Manual clicks intended to increase someone’s advertising costs
Manual clicks intended to increase profits for website owners hosting your ads
Clicks and impressions by automated tools, robots, or other deceptive software
Impressions intended to artificially lower an advertiser’s clickthrough rate (CTR)

Question 22

How Google protects you from invalid traffic

We help protect advertisers from invalid traffic by working to isolate and filter out potentially invalid clicks before they ever reach your account reports. Each click on an AdWords ad is examined by our system. Google looks at numerous data points for each

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click, including the IP address, the time of the click, any duplicate clicks, and various other click patterns. Our system then analyzes these factors to try to isolate and filter out potentially invalid clicks before they ever show up in your account.

Question 23

How Google handles invalid traffic

When our system detects invalid clicks on your ads, we automatically

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we automatically filter these out of your reports so that you’re not charged for them. However, you still have the option to view invalid click data if you’d like to. See the section below about “Viewing invalid click data” for information on how to view invalid click data in your account.

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If we find invalid clicks that have somehow escaped our automated detection in the past two months, we’ll give you credit for these clicks. To view these credits for invalid clicks, click the

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Billing tab. Any invalid click credits you’ve received will be labeled “Invalid activity” on the transaction history page and will be credited to you.

Question 25

Viewing invalid click data You can see the number of invalid clicks your ads have received by adding the

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by adding the Invalid clicks and Invalid click rate columns when viewing your campaign statistics.

Question 26

How do you view the invalid click data

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Click the main Campaigns tab. You can view invalid click data for each of your campaigns, or view the data by time period. To view data by campaigns, click the Campaigns tab. To view data by time period, click the Dimensions tab. Select the appropriate view by clicking on the View dropdown in the toolbar above your statistics table. Choose a time period such as "Day of the week." Click Columns, then Customize columns. Click Performance, then click Add next to the following options: Invalid clicks: See the number of invalid clicks filtered during the selected time period. Invalid click rate: See the percentage of your total clicks that were filtered during the selected time period. Click Save.

Question 27

Monitoring invalid clicks yourself If you're worried about invalid clicks in your account, there are a number of things you can do to monitor your account's activity. 1. 2. 3. 4.

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1. Track invalid clicks in your account statistics: As described in the section above, add the invalid click data columns to your campaign statistics table to see the number and percentage of invalid clicks in your account. Remember that you aren't charged for these clicks, so they don't affect your account statistics. 2. Optimize your account: -Your first line of defense against invalid activity is to optimize your account so your ads receive only the most targeted clicks and impressions. Keep in mind that conversion rate is one of the best indicators of successful advertising. 3. Monitor your account with Google Analytics: 4. Monitor conversion rates on the Display Network: - For campaigns opted into the Display Network, monitor your ads' conversion rates on Display Network sites with the placement report.

Question 28

Low Conversion Rates A low conversion rate doesn't always mean that you're getting invalid clicks. A number of

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of different factors can lead to high levels of traffic but relatively few sales.

Question 29

What are some common causes of, and solutions to, low conversion rates: 1. 2. 3. 4.

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1. Changes in market condition, user behavior, and web content may affect your campaign's performance. Some of our advertisers experience a lower return on investment (ROI) as their industries face increasing competition within the Internet advertising marketplace. 2. Sites that are difficult to navigate may drive away potential customers. Consider evaluating your site's overall design, layout, and functionality. With Google Analytics, you can see if visitors typically leave your website at a certain point before making a purchase. 3. Your keywords and ad text may not be specific enough. 4. Your campaign may not be optimized for the Display Network: If your campaign is opted into the Display Network but isn't optimized, your ads may appear on Display Network sites that are irrelevant to the products or services you're advertising.

Question 30

Multiple clicks from the same IP address Multiple clicks from the same IP address don't necessarily suggest invalid activity. There are several possible reasons why this happens: 1. 2. 3. 4.

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Return visits: Individuals may click your ad more than once when comparison shopping or returning to your site for more information. Shared IP addresses: Multiple clicks from a single source may be due to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigning identical IP addresses to multiple users. Certain ISPs, such as AOL, distribute a relatively small number of shared, rotating IP addresses to a large number of users. As a result, multiple visitors may access your site from identical IP addresses, giving the impression of repeated clicks from a single visitor. Web server logs: Your site's web server logs include data for all visitors to your site, not just those who arrived after clicking an AdWords ad. You may see "Google.com" referrers from visitors who reached your site via the Google search results and not via your ad. Rest assured that your account is only charged for clicks your ads receive. Third-party software: We've found that some reporting software records clicks between pages as a visitor navigates through your website. As a result, it may appear that you received a large number of clicks from a single visitor in a short period of time. For a more accurate way to track only AdWords clicks, we recommend using auto-tagging.

Question 31

Clicks from Google Some people have asked us whether they're charged for clicks originating from Google IP addresses. No need to worry about that – clicks on AdWords ads from within Google

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aren't charged to your account. You may see this activity in your web server logs, but rest assured, you aren't charged for this activity. This also applies to Google's web-crawling robots.

Question 32

Common reasons for increased traffic Just because you see a spike in the number of clicks or impressions in your account doesn't always mean your ads are affected by invalid traffic. In most cases, these spikes in traffic are caused by other things. Examples of why you might see an increase in traffic: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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1. Changes in daily budget: 2. Changes in maximum CPC for keywords: 3. Adding new keywords: 4. Ads are showing on new Display Network sites: 5. Seasonal trends or news events:

Question 33

Report invalid clicks Can you request a click investion

Answer 33

Yes, you can