Google Ads Quality Score: What It Is & How You Can Improve It

When tracking your campaign performance in Google Ads, it’s easy to get lost in the metrics. You know that the various ratings, percentages and figures are there to help you make beneficial changes to your campaigns, but how, and which ones are worth spending time on? One of these mighty metrics is your Quality Score. 

Let’s break down what Quality Score is, why it’s important, and how you can improve it.

What Is Quality Score? 

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that your quality score is simply a quality rating that Google gives each keyword in your ad groups. 

To understand the implications of Quality Score, first you need to understand the importance of ad rank. When Google’s algorithms decide which ad will win in an auction, it weighs up the ad rank of each competing ad. As you can imagine, ads with a higher rank have a higher chance of winning the auction and being shown to potential customers. 

Ad rank  = CPC Bid x Quality Score

Quality Score is graded from 1-10, with 10 being the highest and 1 meaning you have some work to do! You’ll find your Quality Score rating in the ‘Search Keywords’ tab under each ad group, with one rating for each keyword. 

Why Does Quality Score Matter? 

Since Quality Score helps to determine your ad rank, improving your Quality Score will improve your ad rank, thereby increasing the chances that your ad will win the auction and be shown to potential customers. 

Google also uses Quality Score to calculate your cost-per-click, so a higher quality score means you’ll be charged less per click on your ads. To summarise, a high Quality Score helps keep your spending down, and your ad performance up. It’s a win-win! 

How Is Quality Score Calculated?

Google takes three factors into account when calculating your Quality Score, using the calculation below:

Landing Page Experience + Ad Relevance + Expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) = Quality Score

Each of the components above are given a rating: below average, average, or above average. Studies have shown that expected CTR and landing page experience carry more weight than ad relevance, so prioritise these two factors when making your optimisations.

How To Improve Quality Score? 

You can improve your overall Quality Score by improving your landing page experience, ad relevance and expected CTR. Let’s break these down:

Landing Page Experience

What is it? Once a user has clicked on your ad, this assesses how well the landing page will meet their intent.  

How to improve it? Google’s ideal landing page will be clear, useful and relevant. Is your landing page relevant to the user’s search intent, and to the keywords in your ad? If not, consider changing the final URL to a more relevant landing page on your website, or modifying your copy. Improving your site speed is important here, as well as optimising your pages for mobile devices as well as desktops. 

Ad Relevance

What is it? Quite simply, are your ads relevant to the user’s search intent? 

How to improve it? Ensure your keywords are being used in your ad text. Organising your ad campaigns into ad groups based on small groups of focused keywords will help to ensure relevancy. 

Expected CTR

What is it? Google’s estimation of how likely it is that a user will click on your ad. 

How to improve it? Regularly review your search terms and exclude any that are irrelevant. You should also review the match types on your keywords; using too many broad match keywords can lead to an influx of irrelevant search terms as described above.
If you ensure that your keywords are highly relevant to your ads, you’ll receive a higher expected CTR from Google. 

Essentially, you should strive to keep your keywords, ad groups, ad text and landing pages in specific, cohesive groups. This will improve relevance across the board and keep your Quality Score in top condition. 

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