I get asked all the time about quality score.  So instead of responding to all those questions with something that I knew to be true, I went to the source:  Google.  They confirmed today that Bounce Rate is NOT a Factor in Quality Score.
This email is here to confirm your suspicions about bounce rate on your website.  I however am still very skeptical about this because of the nature of the bounce.  When a person bounces it shows that they are not interested in what your site has to offer.  Typically this would show Google or any other site that the site they just visited wasn’t relevant to the search or the click they just paid for.  Does this comply with Google always trying to give the best experience possible?  NO in my opinion.
Bottom line:Â Bounce Rate is NOT a Factor in Quality Score
Jenny
January 28, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Great job on getting the most reliable answer from the source!
I would have to disagree with you, John, on why it makes sense. Bounce rate could mean that an LP was not a well optimized and not attractive enough, that is smth the advertiser needs to work on, but that would only be unfair if Google “punished” for it. It’s about competition after all, not all websites are created equally beautiful, and it only gives a webmaster a room for improvement.
John Rampton
January 29, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Great response. I stand firm to my answer though… here is why. Bounce rate can change and will change. When it goes down and the user has a better experience the Quality Score should go up. If it’s got a horrible bounce rate and the experience is bad, it shouldn’t be as high.
I agree with you about being punished for a not attractive enough landing page. But once you make it better and more attractive your quality score would go up wouldn’t it? It’s kinda like we’re saying the same thing. I just don’t want my ads showing if I have a horrible landing page (which I never do!) but still. I’d rather it be a factor in there then speed, cause I think it’s way more important that speed and a variety of other factors.
Tally
February 4, 2013 at 12:04 pm
My guess: the main reason Bounce Rate isn’t included is that it requires Google tags to be implemented on the site. Since these tags aren’t REQUIRED for participation in AdWords, they can’t use this metric to calculate QS.
However, I would definitely vote for its inclusion as a measure of a quality customer experience if it was publicly available.
John Rampton
February 5, 2013 at 10:06 am
Couldn’t agree more! I wish it was cause people with crappy landing pages are getting high qs’s and us people who are creating an amazing experience aren’t getting as much benefit for it.