Much like the mystery of the Big Mac’s secret sauce and Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices, we’ve all speculated what exactly makes up the closely guarded formula that determines Google’s PPC Quality Score.

• What are all the factors?
• How much weight does each factors carry?
• How can I exploit this to my advantage?!

Last week Search Engine Journal posted screen shots of tiny suspicious text beneath Google AdWords ads. The text icluded pScore, mCPC and thresh.



This spurred much discussion concerning what these terms mean and why they appeared. Google issued a statement to Search Engine Journal citing a "technical error." The company admitted the data displayed was indeed AdWords ranking information, but refused to share what the statistics meant. (Well obviously.) The discrepancy was not limited to any one country. This Search Engine Roundtable post shows the Netherlands saw AdWords quality score text too.

One day, after eons of research, we may decipher AdWords’s secret sauce. Perhaps it will simply fall into our laps. Who knows? It may turn out to be as simple as discovering the secret sauce for a Krusty Burger:



Let mayonnaise sit out in the sun. (Okay, okay…the Krusty-AdWords connection is highly unlikely.)

I suppose that it’s best for the AdWords Quality Score to remain a secret. It keeps the playing field level and encourages good sportsmanship and all that.

*Sigh*