QualityScore on Shopping Campaigns Criterions with Product Partition always "5"!

[mge...@intelliad.de]

Hallo,

we always get a qualityScore=5 when reading criterions from shopping campaigns with product partitions by API. 

Is there bug known or if it's intended behavior is there any reason for that? 

Greetings,

Markus Geiger

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hello Markus,

Could you please Reply privately to author your CID and SOAP XML request and response so that I could further investigate the issue?

Thanks,
Anthony

AdWords API Team

[Markus Geiger]

News? Status?

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Markus,

Check out the documentation on QaulityInfo.qualityScore. This field only becomes relevant when your criterion is a Keyword. Since your criterion is a ProductPartition, the value doesn't apply to your case.

Best,

Nadine, AdWords API Team 

[mge...@intelliad.de]

Yes. The field is irrelevant. We know the documentation.

But why is it then filled with "5"? Wouldn't it be better you just return "" if it's a product partition? "5" is definetly incorrect. 

Greetings,

  Markis

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Markus,

That's an interesting question. I'll pose the question to our engineers who work on that component. Thanks for bringing it up.

Cheers,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Jason Stedman]

Since quality score is a relative rating of keyword relevance from 1 to 10, a 5 is a neutral value.

The quality score is an important feedback indicator for your ads, so anything that would likely be coerced into a zero may result in false indication of unhealthy campaigns.

A "" would introduce a second data type that is non numeric in this field, unnecessarily adding complexity to every system that uses quality score.

From my perspective, a 5 is better than a blank or null or just not including it in the response. It shows an indifference to the criteria, it's not good or bad.

Hope this food for thought helps. :D

[mge...@intelliad.de]

Yes, sounds valid. 

But what does the Google Adwords-team think?

Greetings,
  Markus

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Greetings Everyone!

Here's an update. There was an issue fixed that affected the behavior here, and there was a lot of back and forth on how to handle this. So, I appreciate everyone's input. If the quality score is not applicable, then the quality score will no longer be filled in. On the back-end, it's being sent back as a null. There was just a lot of general confusion from people when they were getting quality scores for items where it didn't make sense.

Cheers,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Markus Geiger]

Thanks for the feedback!

Greetings,
  Markus

[Florian Lherbette]

Nadine, thank you for this information.

I have a couple of extra questions though:

• Does this affect reports or only the SOAP API? Will quality score be returned as "--" in reports when not applicable?
• Is the API already using this new behaviour, or is the feature not rolled out yet?

-- 

Florian

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Florian,

I put my answer inline. Just look for the ==>.

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 1:15:52 PM UTC-5, Florian Lherbette wrote:

Nadine, thank you for this information.

I have a couple of extra questions though:

• Does this affect reports or only the SOAP API? Will quality score be returned as "--" in reports when not applicable?

==> My guess is that you're talking about the report that can be downloaded from the AdWords front-end. To be honest, I'm not sure what that will look like. I would have to experiment a bit with an account that has data to figure that out. 

• Is the API already using this new behaviour, or is the feature not rolled out yet?

==> This change has already been rolled out.

[Florian Lherbette]

Thank you for your answer Nadine.

I was actually talking about the reporting API, not the reports downloaded from the frontend.

But I did a quick test myself, and for product partitions I see quality score returned as "0" (and not "--", which is more annoying to handle) .

-- 

Florian

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Florian,

Thanks for clarifying, and thanks for giving it a go.

Best,

Nadine, AdWords API Team