What is Quality Score

How it works

The three components each get a status of above average, average or below average. Because Ad Rank multiplies your bid by quality, improving these lets you rank higher and pay less than a competitor bidding more.

• Expected CTR: likelihood your ad is clicked
• Ad relevance: how well the ad matches the query
• Landing-page experience: usefulness and speed of the destination

Common mistakes

Sending all keywords to one generic landing page, cramming loosely related keywords into one ad group, or ignoring landing-page speed and relevance. Tight ad groups with matched copy and dedicated landing pages are what lift the score.

Why it matters

Quality Score is Google Ads' 1–10 rating of how relevant and useful your ads and landing pages are, and it directly affects both how much you pay and where you show. Because Ad Rank combines your bid with Quality Score, a high Quality Score lets you win better positions at lower cost per click — advertisers with strong Quality Scores routinely pay far less than competitors for the same placements. It is Google's mechanism for rewarding relevance over raw spend, which means improving it is usually the highest-ROI lever in a paid account.

• A 1–10 relevance rating that affects both your CPC and your ad position
• High Quality Score = better positions at lower cost
• Rewards relevance over spend — often the highest-ROI lever in an account

Its three components

Quality Score is built from three inputs, each of which points to a fix. Expected click-through rate reflects how likely your ad is to be clicked — improved with compelling, relevant ad copy. Ad relevance reflects how closely your ad matches the keyword's intent — improved with tightly-themed ad groups where the keyword appears in the ad. Landing-page experience reflects how relevant, fast and useful the destination is — improved by matching the landing page to the ad's promise and keeping it fast and easy to use. The unifying principle is alignment: keyword → ad → landing page should tell one consistent story.

• Expected CTR — write compelling, relevant ad copy
• Ad relevance — tightly-themed ad groups with the keyword in the ad
• Landing-page experience — fast, relevant, useful destination matching the ad
• The through-line is keyword-to-ad-to-landing-page consistency

Worked example

Two advertisers compete for the same keyword. Advertiser A bids $5 with a Quality Score of 3; Advertiser B bids $4 with a Quality Score of 8. Because Ad Rank is bid × Quality Score, B (32) outranks A (15) despite bidding less, and B pays a lower actual CPC because Google rewards its relevance. Diagnosing A's low score points to fixes across the three components: the ad group is bloated and off-theme (poor ad relevance), the ads are generic (weak expected CTR), and the landing page is a slow, unfocused homepage (poor landing-page experience). Tightening the ad group around a small keyword set with the keyword in the ad, rewriting the ad to earn clicks, and matching a fast, relevant landing page to the ad's promise lifts A's Quality Score — and with it, better positions at lower cost. The example shows Quality Score is Google's mechanism for making relevance cheaper than brute-force bidding.