Quality Score is a 1-10 keyword-level diagnostic in Google Ads Search campaigns, based on expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, each rated against other advertisers who showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days. You see it by adding the Quality Score columns to your Keywords table.
Quality Score tells you how your ad and landing page compare with other advertisers' for a given keyword. Google calls it a diagnostic tool, says it is not a key performance indicator, and states that it is not an input in the ad auction.
What are the three components?
| Component | What Google measures |
|---|---|
| Expected clickthrough rate | How likely your ad is to be clicked when shown |
| Ad relevance | How closely your ad matches the intent behind the search |
| Landing page experience | How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click |
Each component gets a status of "Above average", "Average" or "Below average". The rating compares you with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days. Google says the 1-10 score comes from the combined performance of the three, but it doesn't publish how they are weighted.
A few details from Google's documentation that surprise people:
- Quality Score is based on historical impressions for exact searches of your keyword, so changing a keyword's match type doesn't change its score.
- A broad match keyword can have a Quality Score without impressions if a matching exact match keyword had impressions in the last 90 days.
- If the Quality Score column shows a dash instead of a number, there weren't enough exact searches to calculate a score.
- Some quality factors aren't captured in the score at all, such as the user's device, location, time of day and your assets.
Where do you see it?
Quality Score is reported for keywords in Search campaigns. To add it to your view:
- Go to Keywords in the Campaigns menu.
- Select the columns icon, then Modify columns for keywords.
- Open the Quality score section and add Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Exp.
- For past values in your date range, add the "(hist.)" versions of the same columns, and segment by day to see daily changes.
- Select Apply.
Does Quality Score change what you pay?
Not directly, because the 1-10 number isn't used in the auction. What counts is ad quality, which Google assesses in the context of every search. Ad quality feeds into Ad Rank and affects whether your ad can show, where it appears, which assets show, and how much you pay per click. Google says higher quality ads typically cost less per click.
Google also lists what doesn't affect ad quality: your bid amount, moving an ad group with the same ads and keywords to another campaign, how often your ads show, and the conversions you report.
What works for me: don't chase the number, read the components. A "Below average" tells you which lever to pull: ad copy for expected CTR, tighter keyword-to-ad grouping for ad relevance, and the page itself for landing page experience. I go deeper in Google Ads Quality Score demystified, with practical fixes in how to boost CTR and how to build a good landing page.
Sources
- Google Ads Help: About Quality Score for Search campaigns - https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167118
- Google Ads Help: About ad quality - https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/156066