Google’s Second Major Quality Score Reporting Bug In 3 Weeks

All Google AdWords advertisers know the importance of having a good quality score on Google. A poor quality score can result in your cost per click prices to soar, virtually knocking you out of the auction space and competing during the holiday shopping season. That is why tracking and monitoring your ad’s quality score in […]

Chat with SearchBot

All Google AdWords advertisers know the importance of having a good quality score on Google. A poor quality score can result in your cost per click prices to soar, virtually knocking you out of the auction space and competing during the holiday shopping season.

That is why tracking and monitoring your ad’s quality score in the AdWords console is a top priority for many advertisers. So when you see your quality score drop suddenly, you worry.

3 weeks ago, I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on an AdWords quality score bug that impacted the AdWords reports. Many advertisers saw their quality scores drop and began to panic. Google came in a bit later, said there was a bug in the reporting and it would not impact their ad prices. Advertisers began to calm, but now, 3 weeks later, a new AdWords quality score bug hit advertisers.

This morning, I reported on yet another bug that appears to be impacting some advertisers. The bug seems similar to that of the one three weeks ago, but wasn’t that previous bug fixed? A Google representative came in to clarify that this is a different issue. The Google representative said:

It is understood that what is being described here is what appears to be a similar but separate issue that folks started seeing on Friday evening, November 19th.

Engineering is taking a look into this, as a priority – and I will report back in this thread when I know more.

In the meantime, my apology for the inconvenience and upset this issue has caused you.

If your quality score dropped, please do not panic, it might be a reporting glitch.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.