Google Ads Quality Score: What It Is and How to Improve It
Quality Score is Google’s 1 to 10 rating of how relevant your keyword, ad, and landing page are to a searcher. A higher score earns a better ad position at a lower cost per click. The three components, expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience, each have specific levers. This guide breaks down what moves them and what does not.
- Quality Score feeds Ad Rank: a higher score earns a better position at a lower cost per click.
- The three components score independently, identify which is Below Average and work on that one specifically.
- Expected CTR is the highest-weighted component; ad copy that names the specific keyword intent moves it most.
- Landing page experience accounts for relevance, speed, and transparency, message match is the lever most accounts ignore.
Why Quality Score matters economically
Quality Score is not a vanity metric. It feeds directly into Ad Rank, the score that determines where your ad appears and how much you pay per click. Two advertisers with identical maximum bids but different Quality Scores pay different CPCs and receive different positions. The advertiser with a Quality Score of 8 pays less per click for the same position than one with a Quality Score of 4. Over the life of a campaign, that difference compounds into a significant cost advantage or disadvantage.
For accounts spending meaningful sums, a two-point Quality Score improvement across core keywords can reduce cost per click by 20 to 30% with no change in bid or budget. That is effectively the same outcome as cutting your bids and getting the same results, or holding bids and gaining position.
What Quality Score is
Quality Score is a per-keyword diagnostic that Google calculates by comparing your keyword, ad, and landing page combination against what it observes across all advertisers bidding on that keyword. It is a score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, and it is updated based on recent performance signals rather than set once at campaign creation.
Importantly, Quality Score is a reporting metric, not the live signal used in each auction. The live signal is auction-time quality, which Google calculates per query using more granular real-time data. Quality Score is the smoothed, averaged view of that underlying quality that you can see in the interface. Moving Quality Score in the reports requires sustained performance improvement, not a single good day.
The three components
Google breaks Quality Score into three sub-scores, each rated as Above Average, Average, or Below Average.
| Component | What It Measures | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Expected CTR | How likely your ad is to be clicked when shown for this keyword, compared to other advertisers | Highest |
| Ad relevance | How closely your ad copy matches the intent of the keyword | Medium |
| Landing page experience | How useful and relevant your landing page is for people who clicked the ad for this keyword | High |
Each component scores independently. A keyword can have Above Average expected CTR but Below Average landing page experience, giving an overall middling score. The component scores tell you exactly which lever to pull first.
How it affects Ad Rank and CPC
Ad Rank is calculated at auction time as a function of bid, auction-time quality (which Quality Score approximates), auction competitiveness, and ad format signals. The simplified version: Ad Rank equals bid multiplied by Quality Score. A £2 bid with a Quality Score of 10 produces an Ad Rank of 20. A £3 bid with a Quality Score of 5 produces the same Ad Rank of 15. The first advertiser wins more auctions at a lower bid.
The actual CPC paid is determined by the Ad Rank of the advertiser below you divided by your Quality Score, plus a small increment. This means a high Quality Score not only earns you a higher position but also reduces what you pay to hold that position. Bidding more is the short-term lever anyone can pull; Quality Score improvement is the compounding advantage that builds over time.
Improving each component
- 01
Expected CTR: write for the intent, not the brand
Expected CTR compares your ad to the norm for that keyword. Ads that name the specific thing the searcher typed convert curiosity into clicks. Use the keyword or close synonym in the headline. Add extensions that expand the ad’s footprint: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, and call extensions all improve expected CTR by giving more real estate for the searcher to find relevance. Remove ads with consistently below-average CTR and replace them with tighter variants.
- 02
Ad relevance: tighten the keyword-to-ad relationship
Ad relevance scores how closely the ad copy reflects the keyword’s intent. Broad ad groups where one generic ad serves twenty different keywords produce average or below-average ad relevance across most of them. Tighter theme grouping, where the ad headline directly uses or reflects the keyword, is the structural fix. This does not require single keyword ad groups (which create management overhead) but it does require that each ad is written for a specific intent cluster rather than a general category.
- 03
Landing page experience: relevance, speed, and transparency
Google assesses landing page experience based on three things: how relevant the page content is to the keyword and ad (message match), how fast the page loads, and how transparently the page presents its content without intrusive interstitials or unclear navigation. Dedicated landing pages that continue the ad’s specific promise outperform generic homepages or service hubs on all three. The LPO framework covers the full page-level approach; the above-the-fold guide covers the critical first section Google reads first.
Common misconceptions
- Quality Score cannot be gamed by pausing keywords. Pausing a low-score keyword removes the damage from active auctions but does not improve the score of other keywords. It also does not reset when you re-enable it.
- A high Quality Score does not guarantee conversions. Quality Score measures relevance and expected clicks, not conversion intent. A highly relevant ad to a poorly converting landing page can have a Quality Score of 9 and a cost per conversion that makes the campaign unprofitable.
- Brand keywords scoring 9 to 10 is expected and irrelevant. Brand keywords nearly always score highly because the relevance match is perfect. The commercially meaningful Quality Score work is on non-brand keywords where competition is real and score differences change economics.
- Quality Score is not used for Shopping or PMax. It applies specifically to Search campaigns with keywords. Shopping and Performance Max use product data quality and landing page signals in different ways, covered in the feed optimisation guide and PMax controls guide respectively.
A 20 to 30% CPC reduction for no extra spend, as above, is why Quality Score work is a core part of our paid media service: it ties creative, account structure, and landing page work to a single measurable number instead of three separate workstreams. Professional services and SaaS accounts, where CPCs on head terms run high, tend to see the largest absolute savings: see our SaaS and professional services pages for the full context.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quality Score is a diagnostic metric Google assigns to each keyword in your account on a scale of 1 to 10. It reflects Google’s estimate of how relevant your ad and landing page are to someone searching that keyword, relative to other advertisers. A score of 7 or above is generally considered healthy; below 5 indicates a relevance problem that is likely increasing your costs.
Yes, indirectly. Quality Score feeds into Ad Rank, which determines both your position and the actual CPC you pay. The formula is roughly: Ad Rank equals max bid multiplied by Quality Score (simplified). A higher Quality Score means you can achieve the same Ad Rank at a lower bid, or a higher Ad Rank at the same bid. In competitive auctions, a Quality Score of 10 versus 5 can halve the cost to achieve the same position.
7 to 10 is the target range. Scores of 7 and above indicate Google considers your keyword, ad, and landing page reasonably aligned. Brand keywords typically score 9 or 10 because the match between search intent and ad content is perfect. Generic head terms in competitive categories often score 4 to 6 without deliberate optimisation. Exact match keywords with tightly written ads and dedicated landing pages are the most reliable path to 8 to 10.
Quality Score looks at expected CTR relative to other advertisers for the same keyword, not your historical absolute CTR. If you are showing a high CTR on a broad keyword with low competition, you may be getting clicks but Google’s benchmark for that keyword may be even higher. Landing page experience is also scored independently, so a high CTR with a slow or irrelevant landing page still produces a low overall score.
Ready to fix what’s costing you conversions?
We’ll review your acquisition funnel, show you exactly what’s underperforming, and hand you a clear, prioritised plan, whether or not you choose to work with us.
Get a clear diagnosis of your acquisition performance.
- 30-minute review
- Free, with no obligation
- Clear findings and priorities
- You keep the findings
30 minutes · Free · No obligation · You keep the findings