Quality Score Analysis & Data Studio | GlowMetrics

Jul 30th 2019

Google Ads

4 min read

Posted by Nicola Russell

Quality Score Analysis & Data Studio

What Exactly is Quality Score? Quality Score is Google's rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords to your ads and landing pages. It’s used to determine your cost...

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What Exactly is Quality Score? Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords to your ads and landing pages. It’s used to determine your cost per click and combined with your maximum bid to determine your ad rank in the ad auction process.

Your Quality Score depends on multiple factors, including:

  • Your click-through rate (CTR)
  • The relevance of each keyword to its ad group
  • Landing page quality & relevance
  • The relevance of your ad copy
  • Your historical Google Ads account performance

When more people who see your ad click on it, that’s a strong indication to Google that your ads are relevant and helpful to users. Accordingly, Google rewards you with:

  • Higher ad rankings 
  • Lower costs 

Long story short, it’s a key to a successful Google Search campaign. In this post, you will learn how to run a quality score analysis and monitor your keyword quality scores using Google Data Studio. Adding this to your monthly to-do list will help you identify main areas and campaigns where should focus your time. A Quality Score Scatter Chart We love using different graphs and widgets to visualise data in Google Data Studio – and this one is great for showcasing how when CTR goes up, Quality Score goes up too (oh! and CPC also goes down!).

Scatter Graphs for Quality Score

From the above chart, you can see that those keywords that have the highest Quality Scores,  have the highest CTRs and the lowest CPC – and the same is true in reverse! How to Create It? This one is easy! Just add a scatter chart to your Data Studio page (make sure it’s connected to your Google Ads data source) and set your Dimensions as “Keyword Quality Score“, Metric X as “Avg CPC” and Metric Y as “CTR” Analyse Quality Score at Campaign Level.

So, we know our campaigns have some high quality scores and some low ones – but how do we fix them when we don’t know which campaigns and ad groups those lower quality score keywords are in? Simple. Let’s throw in a table.  Our table will show you all the keywords in your Google Ads account, which campaigns and ad groups they belong to, what their match type is and most importantly what their quality score is. We recommend adding campaign and ad group filters to your table so that you see can keyword quality score data at the campaigns and/or ad group level.

Quality Score Table in Data Studio

 

How to Create It? First step: Add a table to your report (linked to your Google Ads account) and add the following as Dimensions to your table

  • Keyword Quality Score
  • Campaign
  • Ad Group
  • Search Keyword
  • Search Keyword Match Type.

GlowMetrics Top Tip! Remember only Search Campaigns have Quality Scores so make sure to add  a filter to your table (and all other widgets you use for Quality Score reporting) so it only show data from Search Campaigns   Create Quality Score Groupings Sometimes there can be just too much data – particularly when it comes to Quality Score, so it can make it easier to group quality scores into three categories – Below Average, Average and Above Average.

Reducing the number of categories from 1-10 to just 3 makes your widgets more attractive and easier to understand.  To do this you need to make a custom dimension – don’t worry it’s not as scary as it sounds. How to Create Quality Score Custom Dimensions From the top navigation menu in Data Studio, go to Resources, then select Manage Added Data Sources and select “EDIT” for your Google Ads data source, then click “Add a Field” on the right-hand side.

Then, simply name your formula and copy the example below to create your custom dimension.  Once you create the dimension, you can create a pie chart to see what percentage of your account spend falls into these 3 groups.

Quality Score Pie Chart in Data Studio

The above pie chart shows the percentage of your spend goes on each quality score area. It’s clear from the above example that the majority of the spend is going toward keywords with  “Average” quality score while only 4% of the spend on “Above Average keywords. It doesn’t have to be a pie chart either, feel free to go ahead and make it whatever best helps you to visualise your data whether it’s a pie chart, table or bar chart.  

Quality Score vs Branded & Competitor Keywords Remember to exclude brand campaigns from your analysis as naturally the highest quality scores in your account and therefore may skew your numbers and lead to a misleading analysis. Furthermore, if you are targeting competitor keywords you should really exclude them too. Those keywords are notoriously difficult to get a decent quality score for, so they too will skew your data, To filter our the branded or competitor keywords, you can filters like the one below to weed out all the campaigns that contain “Brand” for example.

google data studio filters

  And there you have it…Quality Score Analysis in Data Studio Above are just a few of the graphs we use in our client Data Studio reports that you can add into any Data Studio report you’re working on. They should give you increased visibility over your keywords, their quality scores and how much they are costing you.

Do you have any tips or tricks for monitoring Google Ads quality scores with Data Studio? Let us know in the comments below – or if you need a hand setting some widgets up, just get in touch!    


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3 responses to “Quality Score Analysis & Data Studio”

  1. Phil Ohren says:

    Very good guys! Thank you for sharing.

  2. Omnireso says:

    Thanks a lot for this study. Id’ like to know if it’s possible to extract the Quality Score from Google Ads in order to feed Data Studio ? Thanks for any help !

  3. Feline says:

    Do we have the formula for the following:

    “Then, simply name your formula and copy the example below to create your custom dimension. “, part of the How to Create Quality Score Custom Dimensions. I would be more than happy to receive it. Thanks!

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GlowMetrics

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Nicola Russell

Nicola is the Digital Team Lead at GlowMetrics, preparing and executing PPC & SEO strategies for new and existing clients. Nicola specialises in integrated marketing campaigns, combining the best of paid social and paid search to get the finest of results for her clients
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