Understanding the Google Adwords Ad Ranking System

Posted: March 18th, 2009 | Author: Matt Levenhagen | Filed under: Ad Ranking, Adwords Bidding, Click Costs, Quality Score, Tips & Advice | 26 Comments »

This is a great beginners video introducing how Google Adwords works. Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, explains the AdWords Ad Auction… examples of how Bidding works, Quality Score, Ad Rank and how Click Costs are determined. And learn why Google using this ad ranking system

Introduction to the Google Ad Auction

26 Comments on “Understanding the Google Adwords Ad Ranking System”

1 Mens Polo said at 10:48 am on March 19th, 2009:
Great post, very informative. I think a lot of people will find this very useful.Keep post in coming future as well!!!
2 Matt Levenhagen said at 3:23 pm on March 19th, 2009:
Will do ‘Mens’.
3 tratamente said at 6:03 pm on March 20th, 2009:
they’ re trying to attract more people into adword program, that’s all.
4 Ziare said at 9:11 pm on March 21st, 2009:
It’s a good video, it really heps you understand how the sistem works
5 lowongan kerja said at 7:40 am on March 25th, 2009:
thanks for your info…nice article…this is very helpfull for me…
6 Matt Levenhagen said at 3:09 pm on March 25th, 2009:
@tratamente Yep, that’s what businesses do; you can’t blame them for wanting to make money. Capitalism, free market, free will.

To get more people to use their advertising platform, it’s a good idea to produce videos like this to demystify things like the Adwords Quality Score. Myself and others spend thousands every month sending traffic through their platform.

I have 100s of members here in the Blast Membership and I know even a few of the seasoned members that have been in this game for a few years found this video helpful; it’s provided a good visualization for how they calculate and rank their ads.

Adwords doesn’t have to be scary or a total mystery. Like shown in this video, there is reason behind their model; and it works.

Thanks for stopping by! Glad everyone’s enjoyed the video!

-Matt Levenhagen
7 bespoke said at 4:06 pm on March 25th, 2009:
Excellent information on this report! Just wondering though, I’m in the UK as well and I haven’t seen how you could calculate your Quality Score in figures because its either Great, Good, or Poor as far as I know. Am I missing something? Thanks.
8 Matt Levenhagen said at 4:21 pm on March 25th, 2009:
I don’t know if the UK interface is different than what we have in the U.S… it should also show a score next to it.

..but look at the ‘Details and Recommendations’ for starters (links on that window that pops up next to your keywords). If you have poor quality, consider the things in the video above. Write some new ads, test them..

Look at your landing page.. work on that making it more relevant and testing new variations and content on that page. Make sure your keywords on that page are relevant and thread through the process.

There are other factors.. even the keywords history and performance.

Get back and do some more keyword research and find better targeted keywords etc.. expand on what you have.

Ask yourself, is my landing page needed? I know that sounds strange, but sometimes, especially as affiliates, we have to convince Google that the extra step to get to the merchant makes sense; is needed.

There’s a lot that can be done. Much of what we do is test, test, test.. try to be as relevant as possible and keep working on it until it hits.

Good Luck!

-Matt
9 Mr. Green Jeans. said at 9:38 pm on March 28th, 2009:
Im thinking about getting into the seo game. How much work does it take to get up to speed
10 Matt Levenhagen said at 10:38 pm on March 28th, 2009:
….you ask that as you use keywords in your post to gain more benefit from the link to your site.

Do you mean PPC? The vids about PPC (more specifically Google Adwords PPC Engine); not SEO. Although.. they both can be considered ‘Search Marketing’. And I know quite a bit about search marketing as a whole.

-Matt Levenhagen

P.S. My suspicion is you are just posting anything to gain a link back to your site because this is a DoFollow blog, but maybe you’ll prove me wrong.
11 Jason the Poster said at 5:07 am on April 4th, 2009:
I learned this the other day, its quite crazy how much google has evolved.
12 altesino said at 5:23 pm on April 4th, 2009:
Good video. The google system is very complex and video is a good way to show the details. Thanks for sharing!
13 Bob the Poster said at 8:00 pm on April 6th, 2009:
good video with some nice advice on adwords. Thank you
14 sonya said at 8:34 pm on April 14th, 2009:
The explanation is for beginners indeed, but a good introduction. The quality score goes much more in depth, it takes a lot of other factors into consideration from the landing page of the ad.
15 Chris R said at 4:58 pm on April 15th, 2009:
I just started work in the PPC department and this video even had a few tips which I could use to be more beneficial to my clients campaigns. I deal mostly with Yahoo PPC and not Google. Google does off quite a few more features then Yahoo does from what i’ve seen. But it’s alot harder to get quality adds approved through Google. Their Ad Campaign ranking system can be quite brutal.
16 Matt Levenhagen said at 4:15 am on April 16th, 2009:
Depends on the niche to a degree Chris and on a lot of other factors as to why you aren’t getting good Quality..

Is it sometimes harder in some niches. Yes. Is that necessarily a bad thing for those that stick with it and find a way. No. Less competition.

I know many that are having awesome success with Yahoo.. especially for certain landing page/ product models it does extraordinary.

So I would never deter anyone going there or at MSN.. giving them a shot.

But.. in the end, Google still owns 60-70% of all traffic on the web. So if you don’t give up to easy and you find a way to win at the game, you will be blessed with more traffic than you know what to do with.

-Matt
17 Melayu Boleh said at 9:00 am on April 16th, 2009:
I am really into this adwords things.
still new here. hehe.
this video is really good.
It really help me out with this new thing.
Thanks
18 Web Melayu Boleh said at 6:53 am on April 18th, 2009:
Hi..
thanks for the video..
great..
its give me more information about adwords..
19 Mr. Land said at 10:53 am on April 27th, 2009:
This is a goo adwords video and I will suggest it for my clients to view. Thanks
20 Wedding dj Melbourne said at 9:48 am on May 8th, 2009:
Hi,It is one of the most informative post I ever seen before. You have posted very good video that is very fruitful to me.Thanks for sharing such a nice post I glad to read this.Thanks again..
21 Sanjeev said at 11:03 am on May 12th, 2009:
hey,
nice video.Thanks for sharing.
22 baba said at 11:01 am on May 28th, 2009:
i am going to start the ad sense campaign. i was searching the ad sense strategies and techniques and i found out this video.this video will really help me. thanks a lot
23 Matt Levenhagen said at 3:13 pm on May 29th, 2009:
Hi Baba,

I’m assuming you meant Adwords.. Adsense is different. Glad you liked the video!

Good Luck!

-Matt Levenhagen
24 Lisa Lyne said at 11:40 pm on June 23rd, 2009:
Very clear video, i never understood adwords system, now i do!! Thanks!
25 Jerry said at 10:06 pm on February 3rd, 2010:
That’s all well and good, but how long til they change their criteria for Adwords?
26 Matt Levenhagen said at 2:01 am on February 4th, 2010:
I’m not sure I’m following you Jerry. The core methods they use to rank ads has been around for quite a while now..

..there will always be changes and adjustments to the algo and ranking methods to combat spam and improve user experience, but I don’t foresee anything major changing any time soon. I think they’ve settled on a good model for ranking.

-Matt Levenhagen