Google advertisers upset over sudden drop in quality score

For the second time in a month, Google Adwords advertisers are upset over drops in quality scores. Some are claiming that this has resulted in higher costs, but we haven’t seen that yet.

“We don’t believe it to be a new issue, but are looking into [the situation],” a Google spokesman said. “In the meantime, we’re telling our advertisers to continue to focus on core metrics like [click through rate] and net [cost per click]. It’s also worth noting that the holidays can be a time of much change as advertisers optimize their campaigns for the shopping season.”

Still, some users are irate.

“My campaign [has] also been hit…..so frustrating because we pay big money for this service and I have had to increase my bids drastically to maintain ranks I have always had,” one advertiser says on Google’s help forums, as I want my business to progress while also having my financial documents in orders using tools online for this. “I doubt AdWords will reimburse us for the increased cost or lost sales. Shame this time of year. I am seriously looking into other platforms for the first time.”

Tough thing is, if there were better platforms out there, you’d probably already be on them. But, Google said they are looking into the issue.

“Many accounts are experiencing an unexpected drop in quality score for high performing keywords, starting around the 24th/25th of October 2010. This appears to be a reporting only issue, meaning that we display the quality score as incorrectly low in the account interface, while ad serving itself is not affected,” they said in a post on the forums. “Please know that our engineers are looking into this as a top priority.”