The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Quality Score

By: Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach

Anyone can set up a Google Ads campaign. Far fewer know how to make one profitable over time. One of the most important and most misunderstood factors separating those two groups is Quality Score. It's a metric that lives quietly in your Google Ads account, but it has a direct impact on how much you pay per click, where your ads appear, and whether they show up at all.

So what exactly is Quality Score? 

It's a 1–10 rating assigned at the keyword level that summarizes how Google assesses your ad quality. It's not the score Google plugs directly into the auction (more on that in a moment), but it's the best window you have into what's actually driving your results.

Google Ads runs on an auction, and that auction rewards quality as much as it rewards budget. The formula is straightforward. Ad Rank = bid × quality. Which means a higher Quality Score lets you compete more effectively without simply outspending everyone else. If CPCs in your industry are already high, improving your Quality Score is one of the most efficient levers you have.

Quality Score vs. Ad Strength vs. Optimization Score

Before we get into how Quality Score works, it's worth clearing up two metrics people commonly confuse it with: Ad Strength and Optimization Score.

Ad Strength is an ad-level metric rated poor, average, good, or excellent. It is based on best practices before your ads enter the auction, not on real performance data. That rating can feel meaningful, but it has no direct bearing on how your ads actually perform. 

Optimization Score measures whether you are reviewing Google's recommendations, not your keyword or ad performance. Accept a recommendation or dismiss one; it does not matter. You get the same score uplift either way. It is essentially a Google sales metric. If you want 100%, just dismiss everything in your recommendations tab, and you are done. 

Of the three, Quality Score is the only one worth your actual attention.

The 3 Components of Quality Score 

Quality Score is built on three components: Ad Relevance, Expected CTR, and Landing Page Experience. In your Google Ads account, each one gets rated below average, average, or above average. Together, they shape your overall 1-10 score. Here is how each one works and how to improve it.

Ad Relevance

Ad relevance measures how closely your ad matches the keyword someone searched for. In practice, this works best when your keyword, ad copy, and landing page all support the same search intent. 

Of the three Quality Score components, ad relevance is often the most straightforward to improve because you can usually tighten your keyword groups and rewrite your ad copy without needing major website changes. 

Start by checking whether your keywords appear naturally in your headlines. If someone searches for “red high heel shoes,” your ad should mention red high heel shoes, not a vague phrase like “stylish footwear.” The closer the ad feels to the search, the more relevant it is likely to be.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion can also help because it allows Google to insert the matched keyword into your ad copy. It tends to work best with Exact Match and Phrase Match keywords. With Broad Match, it is usually less reliable because one broad keyword can match many different searches, making it harder to create ad copy that fits every variation.

Expected CTR

This predicts how likely someone is to click your ad compared to your auction competitors. It is the most important pillar, and it has the most moving parts.

The key thing to understand is that expected CTR is relative. You can have an objectively strong CTR, say 7% or 8% on non-brand Search, and still be rated below average because your auction competitors have an even higher one. Google only makes money when ads get clicked, so naturally it favors ads more likely to be clicked.

If your expected CTR is below average, work through these steps:

• Check your Auction Insights to see who you are competing against.
• Look up each of those domains in the Google Ads Transparency Center to see what their ads actually say. It will usually become clear why users are clicking their ads over yours. Take inspiration, do not copy.
• Check your Search Terms Report. If it looks like it belongs to a different business entirely, irrelevant traffic is dragging your CTR down.
• Adding negative keywords can help, but it is usually better to address the root cause, which is often the wrong match type, bid strategy, or conversion tracking setup.

Landing Page Experience

This looks at whether your landing page is relevant, fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. If you are a freelancer or agency without direct control over the website, your options here may be more limited than with expected click-through rate or ad relevance.

Start with page speed, since it is one of the most common landing page issues. Run the page through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool and look for obvious problems that could slow users down. After that, review the basics: 

• Does the page match the ad? 
• Is the content original and useful? 
• Is it easy to navigate on mobile? 

These improvements also support better user experience and stronger SEO performance.

How to Find Your Quality Score

Step 1. Go to your Keywords view. In your Google Ads account, navigate to Audiences, Keywords, and Content, then select Keywords.

Step 2. Add the Quality Score columns. Click Columns and add these four to your report. Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. You will also see versions with "hist." beside them for historical data. Those are generally not worth focusing on.

Step 3. Read your results. Each keyword will show a score from 1 to 10, and each component column will show below average, average, or above average. If you see a dash instead of a number, it means Google has not assigned a score yet. Your ad quality is still being determined in the auction and is just not visible in your account right now.

How to Improve Your Quality Score

Step 1. Review Quality Score at the ad group level. Do not start by reacting to individual keywords in isolation. Look at the keywords in each ad group and find the overall pattern. If most keywords have a score of 7 and one has a 2, that single keyword may not be worth immediate attention. But if most keywords in the ad group are sitting at 1, 2, 3, or 4, the issue is likely bigger than one keyword. 

Step 2. Prioritize the lowest-scoring ad groups first. You do not need to chase a perfect 10. A Quality Score of 7 is strong, and even 6 may be acceptable depending on the campaign. Focus your effort on the clearest gaps, especially ad groups with several poorly scoring keywords. 

Step 3. Identify which component is pulling the score down. For each problem ad group, check the three Quality Score component columns. If most keywords show below average for the same component, that is where you start. 

Step 4. Fix the shared issue, then monitor the whole ad group. Keywords in the same ad group usually share the same ad copy and landing page. That means one improvement can lift the performance of several keywords at once. For example, rewriting the ad to better match search intent or improving the landing page experience may help the entire ad group, not just one keyword. 

Why Quality Score Still Matters 

Some advertisers treat Quality Score as optional, a number to check occasionally and otherwise ignore. But if you ignore quality, the only way to win more auctions is to pay more. That is a losing strategy over time.

The 1-10 number you see is a diagnostic. It is not the exact figure being fed into every auction. Your actual ad quality is calculated by Google in real time for every single auction, and the Quality Score in your account is the best window into that calculation you have. It affects what you pay, where you appear, and whether your assets, like sitelinks and callouts, are even eligible to show.

Use it as your guide, and it will keep pointing you toward better performance and more efficient campaigns.