What Is Google Ads Quality Score and Why Does It Directly Control What You Pay?
Quality Score is not a vanity metric. It is the multiplier that determines your Ad Rank and your actual cost per click. Advertisers who ignore it pay significantly more for the same traffic as competitors who optimise for it.
Most advertisers know Quality Score exists. Far fewer understand that it directly controls what they pay per click. A competitor with a Quality Score of 8 on the same keyword as you at Quality Score 4 can outrank you while paying less. That is not a minor difference. Across thousands of clicks per month, it represents thousands of dollars in unnecessary spend.
Quality Score is Google’s rating of the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. It is displayed as a number from 1 to 10 and shown at the keyword level in your account. But the displayed number is actually a summary of three distinct component scores, each of which has a specific diagnosis and fix. Knowing which component is “Below Average” tells you exactly where to focus.
What Quality Score Actually Is
Quality Score is Google’s estimate of how well your ad and landing page match the intent of someone searching for your keyword, relative to other advertisers in the same auction. It is calculated fresh at every auction based on recent performance signals, not just the historical average displayed in your account.
The displayed Quality Score (1 to 10) is a lagging indicator that reflects historical performance. The auction-time Quality Score that actually determines your Ad Rank is more dynamic and responds faster to recent changes. This is why improving your ad copy or landing page can start affecting your auction outcomes within days even before the displayed Quality Score updates.
Ad Rank is calculated as: Bid multiplied by Quality Score, plus additional auction-time signals including expected impact of ad extensions. A higher Quality Score means your Ad Rank is higher per dollar of bid, which means you can achieve the same or better position than a competitor bidding more with lower Quality Score.
The Three Components
Every keyword in your account has three Quality Score sub-components, each rated as Above Average, Average, or Below Average. Any “Below Average” rating on any component is actively costing you money on every click. Here is what each means and how to diagnose which one to fix first.
Expected Click-Through Rate
Expected CTR is Google’s prediction of how likely someone is to click your ad when it appears for a specific keyword. It is measured relative to the historical CTR of other ads in the same auction position for the same keyword. This normalises for position so you are not penalised for showing in position 3 instead of position 1.
Below Average Expected CTR almost always means one of two things. Either your ad copy is not compelling enough for the keyword intent, failing to clearly signal relevance and benefit in the headline, or you are targeting keywords that are too broad for what your ad actually offers, leading to low CTR from users who see the ad and decide it is not what they were looking for.
The fix: write ad copy where the primary headline directly addresses the keyword and the search intent behind it. If someone searches “best running shoes for flat feet,” your headline should reflect that specific intent, not a generic brand message. Use Responsive Search Ads with a wide variety of headline options so Google can test combinations and identify which drives the highest CTR for each query.
Run an ad copy A/B test with at least three headline variations per ad group. Focus on the first two headlines since they are the most prominent. Include the keyword phrase naturally in at least one. Add a benefit or specificity signal (“Free Returns,” “Expert Fit Guide,” “Same-Day Dispatch”) that differentiates from generic competitor copy. Monitor CTR by asset in the RSA performance breakdown, identify underperformers, and replace them.
Ad Relevance
Ad Relevance measures how closely your ad matches the intent of the search query. It is distinct from Expected CTR. You can have compelling ad copy that gets clicks but still score Below Average on relevance if the copy does not clearly match the specific meaning of the keyword.
The most common cause of Below Average Ad Relevance is oversized ad groups. When one ad set tries to serve dozens of keywords across multiple intent variations, no single ad can be sufficiently relevant to all of them. The fix is smaller, more tightly themed ad groups, ideally built around a single keyword theme with ad copy that explicitly addresses that theme’s intent.
Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) are one approach but can be operationally heavy. A more balanced structure groups closely related keywords with identical intent into tight clusters, each with dedicated ad copy. If “running shoes” and “running trainers” have the same intent, they can share an ad group. If “running shoes” and “running shoes for beginners” have meaningfully different intents, they should be separated.
Are Below Average Quality Scores costing you money right now?
Our Google Ads management team audits Quality Score components across every keyword in your account and prioritises the fixes with the highest CPC reduction potential.
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Landing Page Experience is the most frequently neglected Quality Score component and often the one with the most room to improve. Google evaluates your landing page on three dimensions: relevance to the keyword and ad, ease of navigation and transparency, and page load speed especially on mobile.
Relevance means the landing page content clearly matches what the ad promised and what the keyword implies. If your ad for “accountancy software for small businesses” sends traffic to a homepage that talks about your company history before any product content, the relevance signal is poor. The landing page should answer the keyword intent above the fold, with the product or service the user searched for immediately visible.
Page speed is a concrete, measurable factor. Run your top landing pages through Google PageSpeed Insights. Largest Contentful Paint above 2.5 seconds on mobile is a direct Quality Score risk. First Input Delay above 100 milliseconds is another. These are not abstract targets; they are the thresholds at which Google’s systems classify a page as slow relative to user expectations. Fixing them through image optimisation, server response time, and eliminating render-blocking resources has a direct and measurable impact on Landing Page Experience scores.
Transparency matters too. Pages with intrusive pop-ups that appear immediately, or pages that obscure content before the user can engage, are penalised. A clean layout, visible contact information, a clear privacy policy link, and an evident purpose all contribute to the transparency signal. These are quick wins that often go unfixed because they seem like UX concerns rather than paid search concerns. They are both.
How Quality Score Affects CPC
The relationship between Quality Score and CPC is quantifiable. In a simplified version of Google’s auction formula, your actual CPC is approximately: (Ad Rank of the advertiser below you divided by your Quality Score) plus one cent. This means Quality Score is literally in the denominator of your CPC calculation.
A keyword with Quality Score 10 can achieve the same Ad Rank as Quality Score 5 with roughly half the bid. Across a campaign spending $10,000 per month, the difference between an average Quality Score of 5 and 8 across all keywords can represent $2,000 to $4,000 in monthly spend at equivalent conversion volume. That is not a small efficiency gain. It is a structural cost advantage that compounds over time.
Prioritise your Quality Score audit by spend. Pull a keyword report filtered for your top 20 keywords by cost. For each, check the three component sub-scores. Any Below Average component on a high-spend keyword is a priority fix. A 1-point improvement in Quality Score on a keyword spending $2,000 per month is worth more than a 3-point improvement on a keyword spending $50. The team at Incisive Growth always runs this spend-weighted prioritisation as the first step of any Google Ads quality audit.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Pausing Low Quality Score Keywords Instead of Fixing Them
Pausing a low Quality Score keyword removes the ad spend but does not fix the underlying structural issue. If the same problem (poor ad relevance, slow landing page) affects other keywords, those costs remain. Diagnose the root cause and fix it across the affected ad groups rather than treating each low-QS keyword individually.
Focusing on Quality Score as a Number Rather Than a Diagnosis
A Quality Score of 6 with Below Average Landing Page Experience and Average everything else has a completely different fix from a Quality Score of 6 with Below Average Expected CTR and Above Average Landing Page Experience. The number tells you there is a problem. The component breakdown tells you what the problem is. Always look at the sub-scores, not just the overall number.
Making Changes Too Quickly
Quality Score is a rolling average of recent performance. Changing ad copy today and checking Quality Score tomorrow will show no meaningful difference. Allow two to four weeks for changes to accumulate enough impressions and clicks to shift the statistical signal before evaluating whether an improvement worked.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good Quality Score in Google Ads?
A Quality Score of 7 to 10 is considered good and indicates your keyword, ad, and landing page are well aligned with the search intent. Scores of 5 to 6 are average and typically mean there is at least one component with room to improve. Scores of 1 to 4 are below average and are actively increasing your CPC and reducing your Ad Rank relative to competitors with better-aligned campaigns.
How often does Google update Quality Score?
The auction-time Quality Score used to calculate Ad Rank is evaluated fresh at every auction. The displayed Quality Score in your account is updated more gradually as new impression and click data accumulates. Changes you make to ad copy and landing pages begin affecting auction-time quality within days, but the displayed score may take one to two weeks to visibly shift depending on keyword impression volume.
Does Quality Score affect Performance Max campaigns?
Performance Max campaigns do not display a traditional Quality Score at the keyword level because they do not use keyword targeting in the same way as Search campaigns. However, the underlying signals that drive Quality Score, such as ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR, still influence how Google allocates budget and bids within PMax. Strong landing pages and relevant creative assets remain critical in PMax even without a visible Quality Score.
Can a high Quality Score offset a low bid?
Yes. Because Ad Rank equals bid multiplied by Quality Score (plus other factors), a higher Quality Score can compensate for a lower bid and still achieve a competitive Ad Rank. An advertiser bidding $2 with a Quality Score of 10 can outrank an advertiser bidding $3 with a Quality Score of 5. This is the core argument for investing in Quality Score optimisation: it improves your competitive position without increasing spend.
What is the fastest way to improve Quality Score?
The fastest improvement usually comes from fixing Landing Page Experience if it is Below Average, since page speed and relevance changes can be implemented quickly and take effect within a few days of Googlebot recrawling the page. Ad copy improvements for Expected CTR take slightly longer to show results because they require accumulating new impression and click data. Fixing ad group structure for Ad Relevance is a longer-term restructuring effort.
Should I delete keywords with a Quality Score of 1 or 2?
Not immediately. First diagnose why the score is so low. Often a Quality Score of 1 to 2 means the keyword is too broad, the ad group structure has a relevance mismatch, or the landing page is not indexed or loading correctly. Fix the structural issue first. If after corrective action the keyword still scores very low and generates poor conversion metrics, then removing or restructuring it is appropriate.
Fix Your Quality Scores and Pay Less Per Click
The team at Incisive Growth runs spend-weighted Quality Score audits across every keyword in your account and builds a prioritised fix plan that reduces CPC while maintaining conversion volume.
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