• Overview
• Benefits
• How It Works
• Low Quality Index Ads
• Tips for Improving Your Quality Index
• Quality Index FAQs

Overview

The quality index is a relative measure of how relevant an ad is. It reflects an ad's ability to meet the needs of users by taking into account various relevance factors and click-through rate compared to its position and other ads displayed at the same time. It also takes into account all keywords in your ad group.

Quality index is determined by:

1. The ad's expected performance – which is determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms.
2. The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to its position on the page.

You will see the quality index shown as one to five bars – the more bars an ad has, the higher its quality.

An ad's quality index may affect the amount you need to bid and the position in which your ad appears. Generally, ads with a higher quality index may require a lower bid to attain a position and/or may receive better placement on the page.

Benefits

• Tells you which ads are effective and performing well, and which ads need attention. Ads with more bars means higher quality and may require a lower bid to attain a position, and/or may receive better placement on the page.
• Helps you focus your efforts on what matters most to your business—making your marketing messages effective.

How It works

• Each ad has quality index displayed as one to five bars (more bars means higher quality).
• The quality index is updated daily.
• When you create a new ad, your quality index is initially based on various relevance factors for the keyword and ad. Please note, you may not see a quality index displayed in your account until the day after your first impression is recorded.
• As impressions and clicks accumulate, your click-through rate becomes a stronger factor in calculating your quality index.
• A low quality index score may cause the ranking of your ad to drop down in the results. As a result, you may not see your ad in the same place or page as before. To monitor your ads' performance, go to the Ad Group Details page.
• Please note that any ad with a low quality index may also be in danger of not being displayed in search results. We may filter out low quality ads to improve the search experience of our users. Our analysis has shown that improving the collective quality of ads shown for a particular search term improves click-through rates. As a result, we recommend that when you see that an ad’s quality index is low, you take immediate action to improve its quality.
• It is also possible that your ad is not being displayed due to a combination of a low bid and low ad quality. In this case, it is possible that a bid increase would result in the ad being displayed. But always focus on improving your ad quality first. Higher quality ads may allow for a lower bid and/or receive better placement on the results page.

Low Quality Index Ads

Ads with a low quality index score may trigger an alert, depending on your account alert settings. A list of ads with a low quality index score can be accessed from the Dashboard, via either the Alerts or the Accounts Summary panel. From this list, you can see tips and take actions to help improve your ad quality index score.

Learn how to manage your alert notification settings.

Opening the “Ads with a Low Quality Index Score” Page

To open the page from the Alert panel:

1. From the Dashboard, go to the Alerts panel. If you cannot see all account alerts within the panel, click “View All”.
2. Click any Account Notification that states that "Account XYZ (account name)" contains ads with a low quality index score.

To open the page from the Account Summary panel:

1. From the Dashboard, click the “Account Summary” tab within the Performance and Account Summary panel.
2. Click the number next to Low Quality Index ads.

Accessing Tips for Improving an Ad's QI Score

1. Open the Ads with a Low QI Score page.
2. Click QI Tips for the ad you want to improve.






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3. Click any tip heading, such as "Improve Your Ad."






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4. The Edit Your Ad page opens.
5. Make changes or create a new ad using the tips and guidelines provided.
6. Click the Save Changes button.

Note:

• The tips displayed vary based on the individual ad.
• If you click "Create a new ad and optimise," the Create Your Ad page opens.

Tips for Improving Your Quality Index

To help improve your quality index, focus on making your ads as compelling as possible (while keeping the ad very relevant to the keyword and landing page), so that users will be more likely to click on them, thereby possibly increasing click-through rate.

Here are some tips to help improve your click-through rate:

• Create different versions of your ads and use ad testing to help you determine which ads perform best. Try testing different copy strategies, different offers or different display URLs to see what works best.
• Look at the ads of your competitors. Are your ads as compelling? Is your offer as strong as it could be? Consider including a special offer in your ad to encourage users to click.
• Make sure that all of the keywords in your ad group are highly relevant to the ads and geographic settings for which they are displayed. For example, if one or more keywords in your ad group are not performing well, consider moving those keywords into another ad group and writing ads that are highly relevant to those keywords.
• For best results, be sure to include your keyword in the title and description of your ad. Use the Insert Keyword feature to help you do that automatically.
• If you are using the Advanced match type distribution tactic, use the excluded words feature to block certain searches that you believe will not apply to your products or services, which can help keep your results relevant and focus your budget on the likeliest customers.

For example, imagine a user is searching for “televisions”.

Example of an ad that could receive a high quality index:

Televisions from Electronics Planet
Plasma, flat screen, HDTV and more. Free shipping on select models of televisions.
www.electronics-planet.com

Example of an ad that could receive a low quality index:

Super Hot Savings
Hot deals on the best of the best! Click here for savings!
www.electronics-planet.com

Any changes you make to your ad can start impacting your quality index right away. As more impressions are generated over time, the overall effect on your quality index should more accurately reflect your changes.