Pay per click advertisers will this week be given a much clearer benchmark for measuring the quality of their AdWords campaigns with the official launch of the new Quality Score metrics. More About Quality Score Changes

Announced by Google last month, the changes to the Quality Score indexing focus on three core areas. Arguably the most significant change is that the Quality Score will now be calculated at the time of each search query, giving a real time measurement of the quality and relevance of each keyword. This move away from a static score is intended to return only the most relevant and specific adverts for the search query, enhancing the user experience.

Keywords that were previously ‘inactive for search’ due to low bids or a poor quality ranking will now be active but are still unlikely to show if the minimum thresholds are not met.

The final change made to the quality algorithm is to outlaw the minimum bid facility. This has now been replaced with a first page bid tool, providing the advertiser with the minimum bid amount to appear on page one of Google’s search results.

Daniel Jupp, founder of Top Position said, “These changes to the Quality Score indexing are an interesting development for AdWords advertisers. They’re particularly interesting to the user as they suggest adverts will need to specifically address their search queries to appear. This is also good news for advertisers as it means loosely targeted keywords and ads will need to be tightened up, helping to refine search traffic.”