Google assigns each ad a quality score as an indicator of the relevance of the Google Ad and the landing page.
This is a 1-10 scale where a higher score indicates a higher quality and more relevant ad and landing page.
But what does this score actually impact? Why is it important? Google Quality Score for Search campaigns is an important piece of your analytics…
Why is Quality Score Important?
Quality score is important to your business’s overall ad campaign. It can be the difference between a low and a high ad spend each month, and it’s important for the competitive advantage.
Quality score directly compares your Google Ads performance to competitors’ ads, assigning it a score. It’s important as a competitive indicator.
The Quality Score is just another metric in Google Ads that indicates performance. Here, Quality Score is an indicator of where your ads will actually show up and rank.
With a lower quality score, Ads require higher Ad spending, which decreases ad placement and ranking.
How is Quality Score Calculated
There are three main metrics of quality score: click-through-rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page.
- CTR: The prediction of the percentage of users who will click an ad compared to the number of users who see the ad.
- Ad relevance: Ads that align with the user’s search intent will be more likely to be at the top of the sponsored results.
- Landing page: The landing page is where users convert. Having high-value content and ads that align with your landing page are all important to the overall experience.
Google evaluates each of these components as “Average” or “Above/Below average.” These are based on the last 90 days of other advertisers.
If one of these areas is below average or just average, then it may be worth improving.
This table breaks down the weight of each section and can inform which area you focus on:
| Landing Page Experience | Ad Relevance | Click Through Rate | |
| Above Average | 3.5 | 2 | 3.5 |
| Average | 1.75 | 1 | 1.75 |
| Below average | 0 | 0 | 0 |
How to Improve Quality Score in Google Ads
Quality Score improves with better:
- Expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and actual CTR
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
- Keyword Relevance
- Keyword Organization
- Adding Negative Keywords
Improving quality score is done through improving the Ad copy and landing page alignment. You could also try to improve the keyword matching.
Google recommends the Quality Score diagnostic tool. For identifying whether you even need to improve your quality score.
Generally, it doesn’t need to be perfected; a good-enough QS might not be worth the time and effort to improve it.