Locating Sponsored Ads with the Best Quality Scores

MoreVisibility - April 6, 2007

By now, most of us are aware of Google’s QS and vaguely cognizant of the standardized methods of attaining a reputable one. Keyword, ad copy, landing page relevance, historical data, click-through-rates, etc. are all considered necessities when creating high-performing ads.

So do the sponsored ads in positions 1 and 2 have the highest quality scores for a given keyword? Not necessarily. Your Quality Score affects how much you pay-per-click, so some advertisers may choose to pay the extra money to make up for their lack of QS. It’s a balance thing: the higher your Quality Score, the lower your cost-per-click and visa versa.

What if you could somehow locate which competitors had the highest Quality Scores? Then you could study their headlines, ad copy and landing pages, and apply what you have disseminated to your own advertisements. There is no clear-cut way to find these high Quality Score competitors, but there is a pretty nifty trick that will give you some of what you seek.

Type the keyword/phrase of the sponsored ad you would like to improve into the Google Search Bar. Make sure a series of meaningless numbers/letters follows the phrase.

For example: Search Engine Optimization 4564684651
-or- Search Engine Optimization qiuwheqiuh

Because Google cannot identify the keyword/phrase in conjunction with the numbers, it will instead display the best performing ads with the highest Quality Scores. Go ahead and try it out for yourself – let me know if it works for you, too!

Note: If you search on a keyword/phrase more than once without clicking on a sponsored ad, Google may cease displaying the ads.