Google has recently added a few features to it’s system. One is that they’ve added keyword quality score and Estimated First Page Bid to the reports you can run and the 2nd is they’re allowing you to separate Google Search clicks from Google Search Partner clicks.
These are two nice additions to their advertising platform that can help advertisers with their analysis and strategies. As an advertiser, you’re now able to easily find and filter out high and low performing keywords (based on quality score) in order to better optimize them. Being able to separate Google Search clicks from their partner network allows you to quickly see where your traffic is coming from on an ad group or campaign level.
I’m making splitting this into a separate paragraph because this could be BIG. A HUGE benefit of this is… if you have ad groups with either just one word or even just a couple of keywords in it, you can get a much clearer picture of your CTR on Google.com. Why is this important? The CTR that is used to calculate your quality score comes from your performance on Google.com*. If you want to optimize a keyword’s QS, then you can use this new data given to see if your changes are having a better impact on the Google Search Network (data that is mostly from Google.com) which should lead to a higher QS.
* This might be changing a little bit since one place says “note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network—not on Google” while other sources maintain what Google has always said - they only take your Google.com CTR.
I’m also assuming that if you’re using Google conversion tracking, you’ll be able to see conversion data broken out by Google Network and Partner Network - another benefit.
Now, this all sounds great, but Google being Google, always likes to hold back when they give us something. The quality score and “new minimum bid” reporting only shows current data so if you want to view any trend data on your QS or first page bids, you’ll have to collect the data yourself. For the Search Network vs Partner Network display, the first negative is that I didn’t see any option to run a report to get the data so it looks like it’s only available within the campaign management section.
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