Adwords quality score question

[Jakehyten]

If I am paying .35 a click and have a quality score of 8/10 what do you think would be the difference if I brought that up to a 10/10. Any estimation of the kind of difference it would make in click cost?

Does it actually make a big difference in what i would pay?

Thanks

[Jakehyten]

nobody has any ideas?

[dburk]

Hi Jakehyten,

I have never seen anything from Google that reveals the precise formula using the displayed Quality Score. It's likely that the internal (non-displayed) Quality score has more granularity than the 1 - 10 displayed Quality Score. Here's a link that explains how it effects your ad position and cost, but you will notice it uses numbers that are larger than the 1-10 displayed in your account.

Quality and what you pay - AdWords Help

[Lucid]

The short answer is, there's no way to predict what effect an increase of QS will have on your cost. One problem is as Don says, the true QS, the granularity. Your QS is displayed as being 7 but the true number is anywhere between 6.50000 and 7.49999

Your cost is also depends on what the competitor below you pays. I talk more about this in my Adwords FAQ.

Here's a really, really simple example of five advertisers, their bid, QS and what they would pay if their ad was clicked. They are

Advertiser Bid QS Adrank Pays
1 30 8 240 22
2 23 10 230 21
3 22 10 220 22
4 30 7 210 24
5 25 8 200 25

You are advertiser 5 with QS of 8 and bidding 25 cents. If your QS goes up to 10, the resulting adrank would give you 250 which would put you in first place. The cost formula means you'd pay 25 cents, exactly the same.

But, if the first advertiser had a higher adrank (say by bidding more), your QS of 10 would put you in second place and you'd pay 21 cents because current advertiser 2 is bidding 23 cents.

So you see, you can't make a simple calculation (QS is 25% more so I'd pay 25% more) doesn't work. It depends not only on you but other advertisers.