Quality Score is a diagnostic tool used by search engines like Google and Microsoft Ads to rate the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. This metric uses a scale of 1 to 10 to show how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers. Maintaining a high score helps you secure better ad positions and lower your cost per click (CPC).
What is Quality Score?
Quality Score measures the user experience provided by your ads and landing pages when people search for specific keywords. Scores are available at the keyword level within your advertising account. A higher score indicates that your ad and landing page are more relevant and useful to a user than those of your competitors.
Google uses three core components to determine the score: * Expected click-through rate (eCTR): The likelihood that users will click your ad. * Ad relevance: How closely your ad text matches the intent behind a user's search. * Landing page experience: How useful, transparent, and easy to navigate your website is for people who click the ad.
Each component receives a status of "Above average," "Average," or "Below average" based on a comparison with other advertisers over the last 90 days.
Why Quality Score matters
Quality Score acts as a gatekeeper for your Search Network performance. It determines if a keyword is eligible to enter an auction and influences how much you pay for every engagement.
- Determines Ad Rank: Your position on the search results page is calculated using the formula [Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score] (PPC Hero).
- Reduces Costs: High-quality ads can achieve top positions even with lower bids than competitors.
- Asset Eligibility: Google uses this metric to decide if your ad will show assets like sitelinks or callouts.
- Efficiency: A high score can lead to a better return on investment (ROI) by lowering the cost of acquiring a customer.
How Quality Score works
The system evaluates your performance based on historical data. When you add a new keyword, it receives a baseline score based on your account history until it reaches a specific impression threshold.
- Historical Analysis: Google looks at the historical impressions for exact searches of your keywords.
- Impression Threshold: A keyword only reflects its own unique Quality Score after it receives significant traffic, often in the [multiples of thousands of impressions] (PPC Hero).
- Auction Interaction: While Quality Score is a diagnostic tool and not a direct input in the real-time auction, the factors it measures (relevance and experience) are used to determine Ad Rank.
Types of Quality Score
The visible 1-10 score at the keyword level is the most common, but other variations influence your account:
- Account-Level Quality Score: Based on the historical performance of all keywords and ads in your account. A history of poor performance can make it harder for new keywords to gain traction.
- Ad Group Quality Score: This is an average of the keyword quality scores within a specific ad group, helping you identify which themes need restructuring.
- Display Network Quality Score: Calculated differently than search. It considers your ad's historical performance on specific sites or similar sites within the network.
- Mobile Quality Score: Uses the same core factors but also accounts for the distance between the user and the business location when location data is available.
Best practices
- Group keywords tightly: Create small, themed ad groups to ensure your ad copy highly matches your keywords.
- Optimize site speed: Improve your landing page load times to meet user expectations. [Google considers a slow load time to be the regional average plus three seconds] (PPC Hero).
- Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI): This tool automatically inserts the searched keyword into your ad copy, which can increase relevance and CTR.
- Refine ad copy: Aim for compelling headlines that speak directly to the searcher's query to improve your eCTR.
- Review your landing pages: Ensure the content on your page directly answers the intent of the keyword you are bidding on.
Common mistakes
Mistake: Thinking that changing keyword match types (like switching from Broad to Exact) will change your Quality Score. Fix: Understand that Quality Score is calculated based on historical impressions for exact searches, regardless of the match type you use.
Mistake: Ignoring ads with low click-through rates. Fix: Rewrite any ad where the [CTR is less than 1.5%] (PPC Hero), as Google often views this as a sign of low relevance.
Mistake: Believing that pausing a keyword erases its history. Fix: Deleting or pausing elements does not erase their historical impact on the account. However, pausing poor performers prevents them from accumulating more negative data.
Mistake: Assuming a higher ad position automatically improves your Quality Score. Fix: Google adjusts its formula to account for the fact that top positions naturally get more clicks, so position alone does not inflate your score.
Examples
Example scenario (High Score): You bid on your own brand name. Your ad mentions the brand, and the landing page is your homepage. Because the relevance is high and users searching for your brand are very likely to click, you will likely see a [score between 7 and 10] (WordStream).
Example scenario (Low Score): You bid on a competitor's brand name. You cannot use their trademarked name in your ad copy, and your landing page is about your own services. Users may be less likely to click your ad when looking for the competitor. This often results in a [score between 1 and 3] (WordStream).
FAQ
What is a "good" Quality Score? A score of 7 to 10 is considered excellent. Most keywords fall into the 4 to 6 range, which is considered great or average. If a keyword has a score of 1 to 3, it should be improved unless it is still meeting your specific conversion goals.
Why does my keyword show a "—" instead of a score? This dash appears when there are not enough searches that exactly match your keywords to determine a score. This usually happens with new keywords or those with very low search volume.
Does my performance on the Display Network affect my Search Quality Score? No. These scores are separate. Performance on the Google Display Network does not impact your Quality Score for Search campaigns because the user behavior and criteria for relevance differ between the two networks.
Can I see my past Quality Scores? Yes. You can add "Quality Score (hist.)" columns in the Google Ads interface to see historical data for specific reporting periods. You can also segment your reports by day to see how the score changed over time.
How does landing page quality affect my score? Google's crawlers assess your page for original content, transparency, and ease of navigation. If your page is difficult to use on mobile devices or contains irrelevant content, your "Landing page experience" status will drop to "Below average."
