Google says it doesn’t exist, and most people in the industry say it does, but we’re asking how relevant it is.
The main question we want answered is; how important is the history of an account?
It was never questioned
I ran Allianz’s paid search campaign for many years, and its strategy of always being in the top rank for the industry’s hero term ‘car insurance’ paid dividends. I’m not saying it was a positive ROI term but it greatly helped their account level quality score, allowing them to pay far lower CPCs across all terms than their competitors. When they moved agencies, which I was a part of, we moved the account with Google – not to retain the data – as we had that elsewhere but to retain the account level quality score. It was never questioned; we had to do it!
At Indago Digital, we’re happy to start fresh when a new client’s quality score is poor, although Google recommends against it, as we know that within a few weeks, we can build a better quality score, and the history of the campaign might be holding us back. What we internally disagree with is what should we do when the client’s QS is good. The obvious answer is always to take over the Google account, but in some cases, that just isn’t possible.
Most recently, Google informed us that QS at this level isn’t based on the account but on the domain itself.
I hope this is true, as it makes sense on many levels.
We’re about to try it out with a new client and will get back to you when we have an answer.
Written by
Luke Ashmore-Delaney
