Google Ads Quality Score is a 1-10 rating assigned to every keyword in your account, based on Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. A higher score can lower your cost-per-click and improve your ad position, because Google rewards ads and pages it predicts will satisfy the searcher.
That’s the short version. The longer version – the one that actually moves your account – depends on understanding what’s happening behind that visible number, and where to spend your time first.
I’ve spent six years running paid search accounts, and quality score in Google Ads is still one of the most misunderstood metrics in the platform. Advertisers either obsess over it in isolation, chasing a 10/10 on keywords that already convert well, or they ignore it completely and wonder why their CPCs keep climbing while a competitor with a smaller budget outranks them. Neither approach works. This guide walks through what the score actually measures, how it’s calculated, and a repeatable process for improving it without wasting time on keywords that don’t matter.
What Is Google Ads Quality Score?
Quality score is Google’s estimate of how relevant your ad and landing page will be to someone typing a specific search query. It exists on a 1-10 scale per keyword, where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best.
There are actually two versions of this number, and mixing them up causes a lot of confusion.
Visible Quality Score vs. Auction-Time Quality Score
The visible quality score is what you see in your Google Ads interface – under the “Qual. Score” column, once you add it. This is a rounded, simplified snapshot that updates periodically and gives you a general read on how a keyword is performing.
The auction-time quality score is calculated fresh every single time your keyword is eligible to show for a search. It factors in the specific device, location, time of day, and even the exact phrasing of the query. Because there could be millions of these calculations happening across an account, Google doesn’t display them anywhere.
When people talk about “improving quality score,” they mean the visible one – because it’s the only version you can actually see and act on. The good news is that improving your visible score generally pulls your auction-time scores up with it, since both are built from the same underlying signals.
Why Quality Score Matters (Ad Rank, CPC, Position)
Quality score feeds directly into Ad Rank, which determines whether your ad shows at all and where it lands on the page. A simplified version of the formula looks like this:
Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score (plus ad extensions and other relevance factors)
Two advertisers can bid the exact same amount and land in completely different positions because one has a 8/10 quality score and the other has a 3/10. The advertiser with the higher score often pays less per click for a better position – that’s the entire economic argument for caring about this number.
The 3 Components of Quality Score
Every keyword’s score is built from three sub-factors. Each one gets rated as “below average,” “average,” or “above average” compared to other advertisers bidding on similar terms.
Expected CTR
This measures whether your ad is likely to get clicked, relative to what Google expects for that keyword and position. It’s not your raw click-through rate – it’s your CTR adjusted for ranking position, ad extensions used, and the specific query. An ad in position 4 with a 3% CTR might score better than an ad in position 1 with a 2% CTR, because position 1 naturally attracts more clicks regardless of relevance.
Ad Relevance
This looks at how closely your ad copy matches the intent behind the keyword. If someone searches “emergency plumber Kolkata” and your ad talks generically about “plumbing services,” Google can tell the match is loose. Tighter alignment between keyword and ad text – including the headline, not just the description – pushes this rating up.
Landing Page Experience
This rates how well your destination page answers the query once someone clicks. It’s not just about design. Google’s own guidance ties this to page load speed, mobile usability, content that’s genuinely useful for the search term, and transparency around what the business does and how it handles user data.
How Quality Score Is Actually Calculated
Most guides stop at “these three factors matter.” Here’s the part that’s harder to find: the actual point-weighting behind the visible score.
The Point-Weighting Breakdown by Rating Tier
Reverse-engineering enough accounts shows a consistent pattern in how the three ratings combine into the 1-10 number:
Rating | Landing Page Experience | Ad Relevance | Click-Through Rate |
Above Average | 3.5 points | 2 points | 3.5 points |
Average | 1.75 points | 1 point | 1.75 points |
Below Average | 0 points | 0 points | 0 points |
The formula is:
Visible Quality Score = 1 + Landing Page Points + Ad Relevance Points + CTR Points
Notice that Landing Page Experience and Click-Through Rate carry more than three times the weight of Ad Relevance. This is why an ad that’s technically well-matched to a keyword can still sit at a 5/10 — if the landing page is slow or the CTR is underwhelming, ad relevance alone can’t carry the score.
Worked Example
Take a keyword with Above Average Landing Page Experience, Average Ad Relevance, and Above Average CTR:
1 + 3.5 (landing page) + 1 (ad relevance) + 3.5 (CTR) = 9
Now take a keyword with Average across all three:
1 + 1.75 + 1 + 1.75 = 5.5, which rounds to a 5 or 6 depending on Google’s internal rounding for that keyword.
This is useful diagnostically. If you’re stuck at a 5 or 6 and all three factors show “average,” you don’t need to fix everything – pushing just Landing Page Experience or CTR to “above average” alone can move you close to an 8.
How to Improve Expected CTR and Ad Relevance
These two factors respond to the same underlying fix: making sure the right ads sit next to the right keywords, and then testing relentlessly.
Fixing Account Organization
Start by looking at each ad group and asking a blunt question: is every ad in this group specific enough to be relevant to every keyword in it? If an ad group mixes “running shoes for women” with “trail running shoes” and “marathon training shoes,” a single generic ad can’t speak precisely to all three. That mismatch drags down both Ad Relevance and Expected CTR.
The fix is usually one of two moves:
- Remove ads that only loosely fit some keywords in the group.
- Split keywords that need their own dedicated, tightly-written ad into a new ad group.
I’ve moved accounts from broad “catch-all” ad groups to tightly themed groups of 5-10 closely related keywords, and it’s consistently one of the fastest ways to lift Ad Relevance without touching the landing page at all.
Systematic Ad Testing
Rotating two to three ads per ad group and testing them against each other tells you which copy earns clicks and which doesn’t. Don’t test on CTR alone – a headline that promises something misleading can spike CTR while tanking conversions. Use a metric like conversion rate or revenue per impression alongside CTR so you’re optimizing for ads that actually perform, not just ones that bait a click.
When to Pause Underperforming Ads
An ad sitting at a high impression count with a low CTR actively drags the ad group’s average down. Once you have enough data to see a clear loser – I generally wait for at least a few hundred impressions per ad before judging – pause it and let the stronger ad take more volume. Keeping 2-3 active ads per group at a time balances enough test data against not diluting your best performer’s share of impressions.
How to Improve Landing Page Experience
This is the factor advertisers neglect most, partly because it feels like a web design problem rather than a PPC one. But since it carries the same weight as CTR in the formula above, ignoring it caps your score no matter how good your ad copy is.
Content Relevance and Usefulness
The page someone lands on needs to answer the specific thing they searched for, fast. If your keyword is “quality score in google ads” and your landing page is a generic homepage with no mention of quality score anywhere above the fold, that’s a mismatch Google can detect through user behavior signals like bounce rate and time on page.
Trust and Transparency Signals
Google’s guidance explicitly calls out transparency about what your business does and how it handles personal data. A visible privacy policy, clear business information, and no deceptive design patterns (hidden fees, fake urgency countdowns, disguised ads) all factor in here.
Mobile Usability and Page Speed
A page that loads in under two seconds on mobile and renders cleanly on a small screen outperforms one that takes six seconds and requires pinch-zooming, even if the content is identical. Run your landing pages through Google PageSpeed Insights and fix whatever’s flagged as a Core Web Vitals issue – particularly Largest Contentful Paint, since that most directly reflects what a user experiences as “slow.”
A Repeatable Quality Score Improvement Workflow
Checking every keyword’s quality score individually doesn’t scale past a small account. What works instead is a prioritization step before you touch anything.
Prioritizing by Impressions and Spend
Calculate a priority score for each ad group by weighting keyword quality scores against impression volume and spend. An ad group with a 4/10 average quality score but only 50 monthly impressions matters far less than one with a 6/10 average and 40,000 impressions – the second group is costing you real money every day it sits below where it could be. Tools like Adalysis automate this calculation across an entire account, but you can build a rough version yourself in a spreadsheet by multiplying (10 – quality score) by monthly spend per ad group.
Diagnostic Flow: Where to Start Each Week
- Pull your ad group priority list, sorted by potential impact.
- For the top 3-5 groups, check which of the three sub-factors (CTR, Ad Relevance, Landing Page) is rated below or average.
- If Ad Relevance is the weak point, restructure or rewrite ads first – it’s usually the fastest fix.
- If Landing Page Experience is weak, flag it for a page-speed or content audit before spending more on ad testing in that group.
- Re-check scores after two to three weeks, since Google needs fresh data to recalculate.
Running this cycle weekly, rather than doing a one-time audit, is what actually compounds into lower CPCs over a quarter.
Quality Score Myths and Edge Cases
Does Quality Score Affect Display, Shopping, or Performance Max?
The 1-10 visible quality score is specific to Search campaigns and keyword-based targeting. Shopping, Display, and Performance Max don’t have this same visible metric, though the underlying principle – Google rewarding ads and pages it predicts will satisfy the user – still influences how those campaign types are ranked and priced.
Should You Delete Low-Quality-Score Keywords That Convert?
No. If a keyword with a low quality score is still driving conversions and revenue you’re satisfied with, deleting it removes working performance to chase a vanity metric. Work on improving the score around that keyword instead – better ad copy, a dedicated landing page – but don’t cut a keyword that’s already paying for itself just because its score looks unimpressive.
Does Organic Ranking or GA4 Data Influence Quality Score?
Google has stated that organic search ranking and Google Analytics data are not direct inputs into quality score calculations. What can look like a correlation is usually two things responding to the same underlying cause: a genuinely useful, fast, well-structured page tends to rank well organically and also score well on Landing Page Experience, because both are measuring related qualities of the same page.
What a Good Quality Score Actually Looks Like
A “good” quality score isn’t a fixed number you should chase across every keyword – it’s relative to your account’s history and your competitors’ bids on the same terms. For most accounts, keywords sitting at 7 or above are in solid shape and rarely need active intervention. Anywhere from 4 to 6 is where the real opportunity sits: enough volume to matter, enough room to improve.
Chasing a 10/10 on every keyword usually isn’t worth the time it takes, especially on low-volume terms where the CPC savings won’t offset the hours spent restructuring ad groups and rebuilding landing pages. Put that effort into the handful of high-spend ad groups sitting in the middle of the range instead. That’s where a one-point improvement in quality score turns into a measurable drop in what you’re paying per click, week after week.
FAQ
What is a good Quality Score in Google Ads?
A score of 7 or higher is generally considered strong and rarely needs immediate attention. Scores between 4 and 6 usually represent the best opportunity for improvement, since they combine meaningful volume with real room to grow.
How often is Quality Score recalculated?
The visible score updates periodically as Google gathers new performance data on a keyword, typically reflecting recent weeks of activity. The auction-time score recalculates with every eligible search.
Does Quality Score affect CPC directly?
Yes. Quality Score is a direct input into Ad Rank, which determines both your position and the price you pay per click. A higher score can lower your CPC for the same ad position.
Can a new campaign get a 10/10 Quality Score?
It’s uncommon early on, since Google needs enough click and conversion data to confidently rate Expected CTR. New keywords often show “–” (not enough data) before settling into a score after a few weeks of activity.
Does conversion rate factor into Quality Score?
Not directly. Quality Score is built from Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience – conversion rate isn’t one of the three named inputs, though a well-converting page is often also a genuinely relevant one, which indirectly helps.
Do low-search-volume keywords get penalized on Quality Score?
Low-volume keywords often show “–” instead of a score because Google doesn’t have enough data to calculate Expected CTR reliably. This isn’t a penalty – it just means the keyword hasn’t accumulated enough impressions yet.
Should small advertisers worry they can’t compete on Quality Score with big brands?
No. Quality Score is about relevance and experience, not brand size or budget. A small, tightly focused account with well-matched ads and fast landing pages regularly outscores larger accounts running generic, loosely targeted campaigns.
Conclusion
Quality Score isn’t a metric to chase for its own sake-it’s a diagnostic tool that helps you identify where your ads and landing pages may be falling short of what searchers need. As Surojit Bera recommends, make the weekly optimization workflow a consistent habit rather than a one-time fix. Over time, better relevance, stronger ad experiences, and improved landing pages can naturally help reduce CPCs-without obsessing over the Quality Score number itself.
