What is Google Ads Quality Score?
Quality Score is a rating from 1 to 10 that Google Ads gives each keyword in a Search campaign. Google calls it "a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers."
A higher score means "your ad and landing page are more relevant and useful to someone searching for your keyword, compared to other advertisers."
How is Quality Score calculated?
Google combines three components:
| Component | What Google measures |
|---|---|
| Expected clickthrough rate (CTR) | "The likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown." |
| Ad relevance | "How closely your ad matches the intent behind a user's search." |
| Landing page experience | "How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad." |
Each component is rated "Above average," "Average," or "Below average," based on "a comparison with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days."
When too few searches exactly match a keyword, Google shows a dash instead of a score.
Does Quality Score affect ad position and cost?
Not directly. Google is explicit: "Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction."
The auction uses Ad Rank, which decides whether an ad shows and where. Google says Ad Rank is based on "your bid amount, the quality of your ads and landing page, the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of an auction, the context of the person's search," and the expected impact of assets. The quality part is measured at auction time, using the same factors that make up Quality Score: "expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience."
So the ad quality behind the score affects cost even though the score itself doesn't. Google says that "even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords and ads."
How should a moving company use Quality Score?
As a guide to what to fix, not a number to chase. Google says Quality Score "is not a key performance indicator and should not be optimized or aggregated with the rest of your data."
Each weak component points to a different fix:
- Expected CTR below average. Rewrite the ad so it matches what the searcher wants. Google's suggestions include making the offer more compelling and being "more specific in your ad text." For a mover, that might mean naming the service and area searched, such as long-distance moves from a specific city.
- Ad relevance below average. The keyword and ad don't match closely enough. Google suggests "grouping your keywords into themes," for example separating local moving, long-distance moving, and storage into their own ad groups.
- Landing page experience below average. Send the click to a page that delivers what the ad promised. Google says to "keep messaging consistent from ad to landing page," make pages mobile friendly, and improve loading speed.
Google adds that a landing page doesn't need the exact search phrase: "the word-for-word phrase from a search term doesn't need to be on your landing page."
What doesn't Quality Score measure?
Google lists factors that affect ad quality but "might not be captured by Quality Score," including the device used, the user's location, time of day, and ad assets. Changing a keyword's match type doesn't change its Quality Score, because the score is "based on historical impressions for exact searches of your keyword."
For judging whether ads make money, track conversions and cost per lead instead. See cost per lead vs. cost per click.