Quality Score Now By Device Type

Factors affecting the AdWords quality score have been pretty consistent over the last few years with the exception of the two main changes of the user interface overhaul in April 2012 and the landing page changes back in October 2012.

Recently Google updated the AdWords quality score algorithm to take an advert’s performance on different device types into account, this is a big leap forward in our opinion as it really gives much needed transparency.

Segmenting campaigns by devices is worthwhile in many cases just to further squeeze every element of conversion and cost saving out of each keyword but if you can’t do this in your account then you can at least segment the CTR’s by devices using the segment feature :

Once you’ve segmented the data by each device you can see very easily at campaign and adgroup level just how the difference in CTR’s and Conversion rates actually are :

Differences will become apparent and then you can even split the segmentation of the ads down by device type to really focus on what may be affecting conversion, simply click on Ads, the Segment button and then by device.

Below you can see a data set (columns edited to fit into page) for an advert showing computers and tablets with full browsers. This clearly shows that whilst tablets get’s a far better click through ratio, the conversion is lower by a proportionate amount too so the first thing would be to investigate why this disparity with some thorough testing on various tablets :

This change in quality score to show device type data is a great tool to facilitate making better decisions with your landing pages and ads. There are many other studies out there that have conversion data by device type; here for example, showing a clear case for the iPad converting better based on over 80 million visits however results may vary for your product/service so this new quality score segmentation data is great to see.

The visibility from now being able to see quality score by device type should allow you to really go to town on landing pages by device type and laser hone what is working and what is not as you’ll see the result of each device, not just a combined average like it was.