Quality Score is a Google Ads diagnostic metric rated on a 1-10 scale that evaluates the quality and relevance of your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. It acts as a multiplier in the ad auction: a score of 8 with a $3 bid can outrank a competitor's score of 4 with a $5 bid — often at a lower cost-per-click. Target 7 or above.
Google designed Quality Score to create a relevance-first ad marketplace rather than a pure highest-bidder auction. If you're paying more per click than your competitors for the same keywords, Quality Score is almost always the reason. It's the most controllable lever in paid search, and most accounts ignore it until the budget runs dry.
What is Quality Score in Google Ads?
Quality Score is a per-keyword diagnostic that Google calculates by combining three components, each rated "Below average," "Average," or "Above average":
- Expected click-through rate (CTR) — the predicted likelihood that someone will click your ad when it's shown for that keyword, based on historical performance and keyword trends
- Ad relevance — how closely your ad copy matches the intent and wording of the search query
- Landing page experience — how useful, relevant, and fast your landing page is for someone who clicks the ad
Quality Score is not the same as Ad Rank. Ad Rank is the real-time auction score that determines position and actual CPC. Quality Score is the diagnostic approximation — a human-readable summary of the underlying signals Google uses in every auction.
WordStream's analysis of thousands of accounts found that moving from a Quality Score of 5 to 8 reduces CPC by approximately 37%. Moving from 5 to 3 increases CPC by roughly 67%. The score isn't just diagnostic — it directly determines how much you pay for every click.
Why Quality Score matters for your ad performance
A low Quality Score doesn't just cost more per click — it limits where and when your ads appear. Here's the full impact:
- Lower cost-per-click. Google rewards relevance. Higher Quality Scores reduce the amount you pay per click, sometimes dramatically. A score of 8-10 can put you in a top position at lower cost than a competitor bidding 40% more with a score of 4.
- Better ad positions. Ad Rank = bid x Quality Score (simplified). A higher score lets a lower bid still win better positions.
- More impressions. Ads with very low Quality Scores may not show at all, even with adequate bids. Google filters out consistently poor-quality ads to protect user experience.
- Ad extension eligibility. Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippet extensions are more likely to show with higher Quality Scores, increasing ad real estate without additional bid increases.
How Quality Score is calculated
Each of the three components feeds into the overall score, though Google does not publish the exact weighting:
Expected click-through rate
This is the predicted probability that your ad gets clicked when it's shown for a specific keyword. It's based on your historical CTR for that keyword (adjusted for ad position), the historical CTR of similar ads in your industry, and keyword placement in your ad headlines. Getting the target keyword into headline 1 is the single fastest way to move this component from "Below average" to "Average."
Ad relevance
Google compares the language in your ad copy to the searcher's query and the keyword it's matched to. Generic ads that could apply to any business score "Below average." Specific, query-mirroring ads score "Above average." Example: for the keyword "emergency plumber Dallas," an ad reading "Emergency Plumber in Dallas — Here in 60 Min" outperforms "Professional Plumbing Services" every time.
Landing page experience
Google's crawlers evaluate your landing page for relevance to the ad and keyword, page load speed (Core Web Vitals), mobile-friendliness, and whether the page actually delivers what the ad promises. Sending all clicks to a generic homepage is the fastest way to score "Below average" on this component.
Quality Score rating breakdown
| Score | Rating | CPC impact vs score 5 | Action required |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9-10 | Excellent | -50% or more | Maintain and scale |
| 7-8 | Good | -28 to -37% | Target state — keep optimising |
| 5-6 | Average | Baseline | Identify weakest component and fix |
| 3-4 | Below average | +25 to +67% | Rewrite ads and audit landing pages |
| 1-2 | Poor | +100% or more | Pause and rebuild from scratch |
Real Quality Score optimisation examples
Example 1 — Law firm: score 4 to 7
A personal injury law firm was paying $28 per click for the keyword "personal injury lawyer" with a Quality Score of 4. All clicks went to the homepage. After rewriting ad copy to include city name and practice area, creating dedicated landing pages per service, and improving page speed, Quality Score rose to 7. CPC dropped from $28 to $19 (a 32% reduction) and average position improved from 3.2 to 1.8.
Example 2 — SaaS company: diagnosing a score of 3
A SaaS company bidding on "project management software" sent all clicks to their homepage. The landing page experience component rated "Below average" because the homepage talked about the company's full suite, not the specific feature the ad promised. Ad relevance also rated "Below average" because the ad headlines were generic. Fix: dedicated feature landing page + query-specific headline. Score moved from 3 to 6 in three weeks.
Quality Score vs Ad Rank — what's the difference?
Quality Score and Ad Rank are related but distinct. Understanding both is essential for diagnosing auction performance.
Quality Score
- Static 1-10 number updated periodically
- Diagnostic tool — shows you what to fix
- Visible in your Google Ads interface
- Based on historical signals
- Same score for everyone bidding on keyword
Ad Rank
- Real-time calculation, changes auction to auction
- Operational — determines position and actual CPC
- Not directly visible
- Includes contextual signals (device, location, time)
- Unique to each bidder per auction
7 best practices for improving Quality Score
- Match keywords to tightly-themed ad groups. One keyword (or close variants) per ad group is the best-known option. Broad ad groups dilute relevance and drag down expected CTR across the group.
- Include the target keyword in headline 1. Google bolds matching query terms in headlines. A keyword in headline 1 increases expected CTR more than any other single copy change.
- Create dedicated landing pages per keyword theme. Never send traffic to a homepage or a catch-all service page. The landing page headline should mirror the ad headline. The page content should answer the intent of the keyword.
- Improve Core Web Vitals for landing pages. Landing page experience has a page speed component. Use PageSpeed Insights to identify and fix LCP, CLS, and INP issues. A score above 90 on mobile is the target.
- Write ads for the query intent, not the keyword. "Emergency Plumber Dallas" has transactional intent. The ad should communicate availability, speed, and location — not company history.
- Pause keywords with Quality Score 1-2 and no impressions. Low-quality, low-volume keywords dilute account-level quality signals. Pause or delete rather than letting them sit.
- Check component ratings, not just the overall score. A score of 5 caused by "Below average" landing page experience needs a different fix than a score of 5 caused by "Below average" expected CTR. Fix the right thing.
Most Quality Score optimisation advice focuses on ad copy. But landing page experience is often the heaviest drag on low-scoring keywords. An improved ad getting clicks to a slow, generic landing page produces a high CTR component but "Below average" landing page experience — keeping the overall score at 5 or 6 regardless of how good the copy is.
Common Quality Score mistakes to avoid
- Sending all traffic to the homepage — the most common cause of "Below average" landing page experience scores.
- Using one broad ad group for 50+ keywords — dilutes relevance and drags down expected CTR for every keyword in the group.
- Ignoring the component breakdown — fixing the wrong component wastes time. Always check which of the three is "Below average" first.
- Pausing and restarting campaigns frequently — disrupts CTR history that feeds expected CTR calculations, resetting score progress.
- Treating Quality Score as a vanity metric — a score of 4 with high impression volume means you're systematically overpaying for every click. Calculate the dollar cost of the gap to 7.
Frequently asked questions
7 or above is the target. Scores of 8-10 are excellent and come with significantly below-average CPC. Scores of 5-6 indicate average performance. Anything below 5 requires immediate optimisation — you're likely overpaying per click.
Significantly. WordStream data shows moving from a Quality Score of 5 to 8 can reduce CPC by 37%. The relationship is not linear — each point improvement above 5 produces compounding CPC reductions.
Yes. Open your Google Ads keyword report and add the Quality Score column. You can also add individual component columns (Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, Landing Page Experience) to identify exactly which component is dragging the score down.
The visible Quality Score is not used directly in Smart Bidding algorithms. However, the underlying signals — CTR history, ad relevance, landing page quality — factor into real-time auction calculations. Better fundamentals still improve outcomes under automated bidding.
Ad copy and landing page improvements can start moving the score within days, once Google recrawls the landing page and accumulates new CTR data. Full recalibration across a keyword typically takes 1-4 weeks of consistent traffic.
Related glossary terms
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