Rarely Shown Due To Low Quality Score

You’ll see this annoying message in Google Adwords on the Keywords tab in the Status column “Rarely shown due to low quality score“. What does it mean? And what effect does it have on your ads being served or not?

(It depends on your keyword/ads strategy) But as you can see in the image, a short-tail keyword HIGHLY relevant to our ads gets flagged – but it still runs (displays) just fine. I specialize in local search for car dealers where we use “conquest keywords” all the time. That means we use the name of the nearest competitor and variations on the theme. So I see this message on almost every keyword. Just because Google says it not worth doing, and that’s assuming because the keyword may not correspond to the ad text, which may not corresponding with the landing page, does not mean the ads won’t serve – they will.

Wait! That’s only one perspective. It is important to know that, whenever possible, you do want your keywords/ads to have a High Quality Score. And you should know what this quality score business is all about. Its very important.

Google says “Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.” And here is the point: “Higher Quality Scores lead to lower CPCs. That means you pay less per click when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.”

But as to whether your ads will run or not “Rarely shown due to low quality score” may be relevant in context of short-tail or large volume keywords, but when in the realm of long-tail, low volume keywords, you can disregard the message. Your keywords will be productive and your ads will run.