ExpertAdWords

If you’re using Google Local Search as well as a national campaign, there is a little fact you should know.

Google ranks Local Search above a nation-wide search regardless of the quality score.  What this means to advertisers is that their local search will trump their national search despite quality score and bidding.  If your nation-wide search has a higher quality score and appears in the third position and your local search has a lower quality score and shows in the seventh position, the local search will show to users despite the quality score or bidding of the national campaign within that local area.

Theoretically, the relevance of the local search will become better because the ads for that area can be personalized and users will see the additional copy and click on the ads.  The quality score should improve. At the beginning of the campaign be aware that there will probably be degradation until the local quality score improves.

There is no way I know of to prevent this from happening.

Learned an interesting bit of information when I visited Google on Thursday.

Most people understand and use to their advantage the fact that if you have the same keyword in the same Google account, the system will only display the most relevent ad with the highest CPC.

Additionally, if you have two accounts that have the same keywords in them, if both accounts have the same Display URL, Google will run the ad in the account with the most relevent AdGroup with the highest CPC.

I plan on using this technique to phase out old bloated legacy accounts with new streamline Google accounts without comprimising traffic or quality score.

Happy belated five year birthday, Google AdWords (February 23, 2007).