Quality Score in Google Ads: what it consists of, how it affects click cost and how to raise it

Quality Score in Google Ads is a rating from 1 to 10 for a keyword that shows how your ad and landing page compare with other advertisers for the same query. It affects what you pay per click and how high your ad shows. Below we cover its three components, show a worked example of the cost impact, point to where to find it and describe the actions that raise it.

What Quality Score in Google Ads is

Quality Score is a number from 1 to 10 assigned to every keyword in a Search campaign. Google describes it as an aggregate estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. A ten means the ad and page answer the query well; a one means they miss the user’s intent.

According to Google’s documentation, the score shown in the account is a diagnostic metric and is not used in the auction to set ad position. The auction uses quality assessed at the moment of each search, based on the query, device, location and other signals. The 1–10 number therefore shows direction: if the score is low, the auction-time quality assessment is most likely low too.

What the components of Quality Score are

Quality Score has three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Google rates each as “above average”, “average” or “below average” compared with other advertisers targeting the same keyword. Google does not publish the weights of the individual components.

Expected CTR is not your historical CTR. It is an estimate of how often users would click your ad for this keyword, compared with competitors. A phrase with a naturally high CTR in the industry, such as a brand name, is measured differently from a generic phrase that only a small fraction of searchers click.

How Quality Score affects cost per click

Higher ad quality lets you win the auction at a lower bid, so you pay less for the same position. Ad position is set by Ad Rank, which combines your bid, ad and landing page quality, rank thresholds, competition in the auction, the search context and the expected impact of ad assets and formats. The click price comes from what you have to pay to keep your position above the advertiser below you.

Google does not disclose the exact formula, but a simplified PPC textbook model is enough to understand the relationship: the price per click equals the Ad Rank of the advertiser below you divided by your quality, plus 1 grosz. The higher the quality in the denominator, the lower the price.

The same mechanism works the other way. If quality drops and a competitor raises their bid, the click gets more expensive although you changed nothing in the account. For costs, it is worth reading this text together with our overview of CPC rates by industry.

Where to check Quality Score in your account

You can check Quality Score in Google Ads in the keywords view by adding the quality columns to the table. The score is not shown by default, so you need to turn it on in the column settings. Available are the score itself and, next to it, the three components rated “above average”, “average” and “below average”.

• Columns: in the keywords view choose “Columns”, then “Modify columns” and in the “Quality Score” group tick the score and the three components.
• Sorting: sort keywords by cost descending, so you start from the phrases where you spend the most, not from the ones with the lowest score.
• No score: a keyword with few impressions has no rating, because Google does not have enough data yet.
• Scope: the score applies to Search keywords; Performance Max has no such column.

How to raise Quality Score

You raise Quality Score by improving the component rated “below average”, not all of them at once. Each of the three reacts to a different action, so diagnosis starts from the component columns and the most expensive keywords, not from a generic list of tips.

Expected CTR below average: what to change in the ads

When expected CTR is below average, change the ad copy, because it decides the click. Put the phrase users type in a headline, add a concrete benefit or number and complete the ad with assets such as sitelinks, callouts and calls. Prepare several headline variants with different angles so Google has material to assemble ads from.

Ad relevance below average: how to organise ad groups

When ad relevance is below average, one ad group most often serves too many topics. Split the group so each one holds phrases with the same intent and the headlines answer exactly them. The phrases “buy electric bike” and “electric bike service” are two groups and two sets of ads, not one. The same order makes work with negative keywords easier, because queries land in the right group.

Landing page experience below average: what to fix after the click

When landing page experience is below average, send traffic to the subpage that answers the query instead of the homepage. A user who typed “Google Ads account audit” should see a Google Ads account audit in the headline, not a general agency offer. Check also the mobile loading time, the readability of the first screen and whether the price or scope match what the ad promised.

After the changes, give Google time to collect data. The score refreshes with further impressions, so judging the changes for a given keyword takes a few weeks and a sensible number of impressions, not one day.

When it is not worth chasing a score of 10

Quality Score is a means, not a goal, so there is no point sacrificing sales for a ten. As a rule of thumb, a score of 7 and above counts as good and 8 to 10 as very good, but not every keyword will reach such values. A generic phrase that few searchers click naturally has a lower expected CTR than a brand-name phrase.

• Cost per conversion: a keyword with a score of 5 and a cheap conversion beats one with a score of 9 and an expensive one.
• Impression share: check how many auctions you lose to low rank and how many to budget.
• Keywords with few impressions: the score is uncertain, so do not rebuild a campaign for a single phrase.
• Campaign goal: the score helps with click-based strategies, while with target CPA or ROAS the quality of conversion signals matters most.

Quality Score is also a handy check when taking over an account. When we run Google Ads campaigns from scratch or take them over from another company, we start from the quality columns: a low score with high spend shows where budget flows with no effect. As a digital marketing agency we combine it with the search terms report and cost per conversion, because only together do they give the full picture. We describe the differences between campaign types in the comparison of Performance Max and Search.