Share This Campaign:
The pre-sale is over, the book is now available. Order yours here & now.
Nearly two years ago, I decided to write a comprehensive guide to Google AdWords Quality Score. In the blog post announcing this decision, I boldly said that I hoped the time frame for the book's completion would be 'days not weeks'. Boy was I wrong.
The good news is that the book is now essentially complete. It turned out to be quite difficult to get all the necessary information and untangle the many mysteries of Quality Score, and to then clearly describe both the facts and how to apply them.
But I kept at it, and now I'm asking for your help to get this project over the finish line and released as a professionally edited, designed, and printed book. (The final edition is expected to be over 250 pages.)
ABOUT ME
My name is Craig Danuloff. I'm founder and president of ClickEquations, have been actively blogging and tweeting about paid search and quality score for the past few years, have been asked to speak on Quality Score at SMX, SES, for SEMPO, at AdWords Advantage Webinars, on PPC-Rockstars Radio, and at other PPC events over the past few years. I'm also the author of '21 Secrets of High Resolution PPC' and many other books.
WHY A QUALITY SCORE BOOK?
Quality Score is vital to success in paid search and yet there has not been a complete and accurate source of information available on the subject. There is a lot of talk and writing about quality score, but for many the details remain confusing, a lot of mis-information is constantly repeated, and frankly a lot of un-answered questions remained even among the top paid search experts. I was confident that I could gather and organize the facts, and even get answers to the questions that Google has never answered before - and I have.
Quality Score is the secret sauce that drives or hinders success in AdWords. This book is important because every time your keywords are entered into an AdWords auction, quality score determines your fate. The only way to optimize a paid search account is by optimizing quality score - and that requires a full and accurate understanding of it.
The book was meticulously researched, and Google directly supported my efforts: I received technical information and key chapters of the book were reviewed by members of the Google AdWords Search Quality Team. The Google folks told me that they wanted an accurate and detailed documentation of Quality Score to be available to the advertisers that would be interested, and that is why they decided to support this project. (Note: Beyond their support, I have no affiliation with Google and this book is not affiliated with Google in any way.)
WHAT'S IN THE BOOK?
This is an advanced guide to Quality Score that will benefit any serious AdWords advertiser or paid search manager. It starts with the officially published information and then dissects it - explaining, expanding, rethinking, and discussing what it really means and how you should create and manage accounts for the best possible results.
Chapter 1: The Quality Score Quick Tour
This chapter covers the basics of quality score - what is is, how it is calculated, where it is used, and what you can do to improve it. It's intended to be the best short summary of all the key issues about quality score ever written.
Chapter 2: What Google Says and Doesn't Say About Quality Score
Google's official writings form the factual basis of our understanding of quality score, but they're scattered throughout the help system and forums. This chapter gathers key quotes (with link citations to original files) and adds commentary to explain what Google says, what they mean, and what they're not willing to say. Here you'll start to get the idea that this book isn't going to pull any punches.
Chapter 3: The Role of Quality Score in AdWords
Quality Score impacts advertisers, searchers, and the chief money-making business of Google Inc. This chapter dives into the role it plays for each of these players. Particular emphasis is placed on how Quality Score affects different kinds of advertisers and on the hidden benefit it provides to Google themselves.
Chapter 4: Which Quality Score?
Think there's only one number in AdWords named quality score? Think again. This chapter documents the role of visible quality score, the distinctions between it and the quality scores that actually matter, and provides a full list of all the versions and flavors of quality score scattered throughout AdWords.
Chapter 5: How Quality Score is Calculated
The $64,000 question is finally answered in clear and hopefully definitive detail. This chapter disects, deciphers, expands on, and explains the official descriptions and gets to the root of the measures and metrics that really drive the calculation of each different version of Quality Score.
Chapter 6: The Impact of Quality Score
Quality Score matters because it impacts every keyword in accounts in four fundamental ways. This chapter reviews each in great detail, and provides important corrections and updates to the data first shared in the 'Economics of Quality Score' blog post.
Chapter 7: The Numbers and What They Mean
A rating scale from 1 to 10 should be the clearest and easiest to understand scale in the world. Except it really isn't when the numbers represents other numbers that aren't a linear scale from 1 to 10. This chapter will help you to understand how bad a '4' really is, how happy a '7' should make you, and what's so special about a '10'. We'll even prove that '9' exists!
Chapter 8: The Simple Path To Good Quality Scores
There is a direct 4-step process that can virtually guarantee good or great quality scores. This chapter introduces 'The Quality Score Shortcut' which is a set of best practices that setup your keywords to succeed before the first impression or click.
Chapter 9: Quality Score Management Basics
Quality Score management should be standard operating procedure for paid search managers, like keyword expansion or bid management. This chapter describes the right way to approach the task, with clear goals, a view of the role of the different keywords in your account, and sound management principles you can follow in your own account.
Chapter 10: Dealing With Disaster
What should you do when you find horrible Quality Scores in your account? This chapter tackles the tough issues behind business model penalties, landing page problems, poor historic CTRs, and other situations that can do serious and sometimes permanent account-wide damage to your quality scores. It offers advice and suggestions for rehabilitating problem keywords and accounts.
Chapter 11: Everyday Quality Score Management
Finally, with the pre-requisites out of the way, we get to the daily work of trying to increase the quality scores of individual keywords. This chapter introduces a 10-step process for finding problems and bolstering the quality score rating of virtually any keyword in your account.
Chapter 12: Quality Score Q&A
Part summary and part 'stuff that didn't fit elsewhere'. This chapter addresses popular quality score questions from seminars, webinars, blog comments and the twitter-stream.
ADVANCE REVIEWS
"AdWords can be difficult at times; and no part of AdWords is more frustrating than Quality Score. For advertisers to optimize for quality score - they need to understand Google's motivations and calculations. Then, you need to learn from the advertiser's viewpoint how to increase your quality scores while still maintaining profitability. Craig has put together the definative book that combines these two areas and will help you to undertstand and improve your quality scores. This is a must read book for anyone concerned about their AdWords performance."
- Brad Geddes, CertifiedKnowledge
"AdWords quality score plays a major impact on AdWords account performance, yet the full picture on quality score has always been clouded in a degree of mystery. Craig has lifted the veil off AdWords quality score and provided a comprehensive guide to help us understand the why, how, when, and if, questions we ask ourselves daily. Craig's book covers it all, and after reading it I feel a increased level of confidence in successfully managing my client's accounts."
- Kim Clinkunbroomer of Clinks Web Service (Mrs. C. from AdWords Help Forums)
THE PITCH
I've spent a lot of time researching and writing this book, talking with other paid search experts and hounding the folks at Google for support and information. Some of the most knowledgable paid search practitioners in the industry have read at least parts of the book, and provided great feedback. Now the question is what to do with it?We're going to give a free copy to each ClickEquations client. We'll use it occasionally for other promotional purposes as well. Beyond that, I have no idea how much demand there is for a 250+ page hard-core advanced book on AdWords Quality Score. And so before getting more copies than we need internally printed, I thought I'd make sure there were at least a few people genuinely interested.
This pre-sale will confirm that there is enough interest to make a sizable print run worthwhile. This 'first edition' discounted price as compared to what it will offered for publicly after this promotion, and a number of limited-quantity versions and offers only for this event. I hope these allow interested early adopters to contribute to the publication while getting good value for their money.
Better quality scores and an improved understanding of how quality score works can save your company and your clients tens of thousands of dollars each year, and make your company or your clients tends of thousands of dollars per year. I'm confident that the ROI on your investment in this book will be huge.
Over the past 5 years or so I've written hundreds of popular blog posts and given dozens of highly-rated presentations, and up until now I have never charged a fee for anything. I believe that the scope, quality, format, and value of this effort is well worth the asking price, and I think that you'll agree.
The hope and intent is to have books available in June 2011.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In the early years of Quality Score I assumed, like many people, that it would take care of itself. I still thought of Google as a benevolent dictator who had built an automated and self-correcting system that used components like Quality Score to keep everything automatically in balance. As Quality Score has matured and I learned more about it, my view changed.
Keywords don't automatically get the Quality Score they deserve, they get the Quality Score they earn. And if you don't know exactly what's being measured and how it's being applied then you're leaving that optimization up to chance. And Google it turns out, is in business to make money. There's nothing wrong with that but it does mean that you have to take responsibility for your own education and for looking out for your own best interests. Both are tough when the information you need isn't readily available. This book will help.
Thank you for your support.
The pre-sale is over, the book is now available. Order yours here & now.
