Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion Can affect Your Quality Score

Posted: April 9, 2009

In the old days, before October 08 when Google changed QS to be real time, using dynamic keyword insertion could help your QS because the ad received a higher CTR; not because the keyword was suddenly in the ad.

This is no longer true. DKI can affect your actual QS (what is calculated when the ad is being shown).

As Google is evaluating the ad copy and keyword to the search query in real time, they are using the actual ad (after DKI) being seen by the searcher to determine the QS.

each keyword’s Quality Score is determined after the keyword is triggered and inserted into the ad seen by the user. This is true of any AdWords text ad, where the ad and keyword are included in the Quality Score evaluation. Each ad variation and keyword combination will undergo its own Quality Score evaluation, and accrue its own individual performance history within your account.

Source: AdWords Help

One of the issues with quality score is that it’s at the:

ad copy
keyword
geography
search partner intersection

You are only seeing a ‘generic’ quality score in your account. It’s the one you have to optimize for as you can’t see all the variations.

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Written by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper · Filed Under Blog, Google AdWords

Comments

3 Responses to “Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion Can affect Your Quality Score”

h.wang on October 2nd, 2009 5:08 am

That means, in order to make DKI work better, you have to make sure the actual ad copy (after DKI) making sense, not just simply repeating the kws, right?

Using DKI only affect your QS when the actual ad copy (after DKI) shows a bad quality?
Brad Geddes aka eWhisper on October 2nd, 2009 5:34 am

There are several factors that make up quality score (http://www.bgtheory.com/blog/google-adwords-quality-score-factors-chart/).

When placed into buckets, they go in this order:
CTR
Relevancy
Landing Page

One of the relevancy factors is relevance of the ad copy to the search query. This is a real time analysis and is not completely reflected in the number that is shown inside your AdWords account.

For DKI to be effective, there are a few things that need to occur:
The ad needs to stand out (if the ads blend into each other, CTR suffers).
The ad has to be attractive to the searcher (poor DKI usage often lowers CTR)
The ads need to be related to the search query (DKI does this automatically by adding the keyword).

Therefore, the use of DKI is more likely to affect you via the CTR factors and not the relevancy factors; however, DKI can definaetly improve QS as well now due to that change in the QS factor.

With DKI, it is useful to write two ads and test them out to see which does better.

There are many search results where the DKI is so poor, or everyone is using it; that just by writing a good ad you can have a much higher CTR (and QS) than anyone else: http://www.bgtheory.com/blog/you-really-can-write-better-ads-than-your-big-boy-competition/
Dan Perach on February 2nd, 2010 2:24 pm

sorry if i’m a bit thick here…

so, DKI … after Oct 08 also helps with QS as the kw is now in the ad as well?

DKI helps with CTR, if done correctly.

I am now using DKI with brand campaigns, where we “should not” use a competitors name. Is this a dodgy strategy?