Could there be something brewing with Google AdWords that we don’t know about? There are a number of reports from AdWords users that their keyword quality score have fallen significantly.
According to Ginny Marvin of Search Engine Land, she’s confirmed these reports with her own findings. Exact match brand keywords that had a quality score of 10 now has decreased to a quality score of 6.
It seems that not only are keywords getting lowered, but click prices might be taking a hit as well. But according to Google, this is simply a bug. Following is the official statement.
So how many accounts have been affected by this bug? It’s hard to say. An advertiser said that they confirmed that an AdWords rep said it was a widespread bug:
“Just spoken to someone at Google and this is a widespread issue/bug that has affected many accounts in the UK. Their engineers are looking into it but they couldn’t give a timeframe when it will be fixed.”
Update 11:09 AM Eastern: A Google spokesperson issued this statement:
“We’re aware of a bug that is affecting quality score reporting and are actively working to fix this. Rest assured, the bug affects reporting only, not ad serving. We’re expecting it to be fixed in the next day.”
“We’re aware of a bug that is affecting quality score reporting and are actively working to fix this. Rest assured, the bug affects reporting only, not ad serving. We’re currently rolling out fixes and expect all accounts to see normal reporting by tomorrow.”