Quality Score.

What is Quality Score?

Quality Score is a diagnostic rating from 1 to 10 that Google Ads gives each keyword in a search campaign, estimating how relevant your ads and landing page are compared with other advertisers on the same keyword.

It is built from three components: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Each one is rated above average, average or below average.

Why it matters

Relevance affects what you pay. Google states that Quality Score itself is not an input to the ad auction, but the same quality signals are assessed in real time to calculate Ad Rank, which decides whether your ad shows, where it appears and what each click costs. Poorly matched keywords tend to cost more and sit lower. For a small business competing against bigger budgets, better relevance is one of the few ways to win clicks without simply outbidding everyone.

The three components

• Expected clickthrough rate How likely your ad is to be clicked when it shows for that keyword, compared with other advertisers.
• Ad relevance How closely the wording of your ad matches the intent behind the search.
• Landing page experience How useful and relevant the page is to people who click, including whether it delivers what the ad promised.

What to do about it

In Google Ads, add the Quality Score columns, including the three component columns, to your keywords view. Sort your highest-spending keywords and look for any component marked below average. For ad relevance, check the keyword's theme appears in your headlines. For landing page experience, open the page on a phone and check it loads quickly and answers the search directly. Leave low-spend keywords alone; they rarely justify the effort.