What is Quality Score in Google Ads?
What is Quality Score made of?
Google describes three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience1.
- Expected click-through rate. How likely your ad is to be clicked when shown. See click-through rate.
- Ad relevance. How closely the ad matches what the person searched for.
- Landing page experience. How useful the page is after the click. A landing page is simply where the ad sends people.
The score is per keyword, not per account. Google says it should not be aggregated with the rest of your data1, so an account-wide "average Quality Score" is someone's own calculation.
Does Quality Score decide what you pay?
Google says Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction, and that it is not a KPI1. Ad Rank is the set of values Google Ads uses to decide whether your ad can show and where it appears. It is a separate idea with its own page.
So treat Quality Score as a hint. A low score on a keyword is a reason to look at the ad or the page. It is not a result that tells you whether the business gained.
Our view: Sales, margin and payback are the results. Quality Score can explain a problem. It cannot prove success.
How does it connect to the rest of the account?
Weak landing pages and weak ads can show up in other places too, such as click-through rate and conversion rate. Those are closer to money. How bids are set is a separate question: see bid strategy and impression share.
For where this sits in daily account work, read Google Ads for ecommerce. For the bigger question of where to spend, see paid media strategy for ecommerce.
Easily confused with
Quality Score vs Ad Rank
Decides whether and where an ad shows. Ad and landing page quality feed into it, but Google says the Quality Score number itself is not an auction input1.
Quality Score vs Landing page experience
One of the three parts of Quality Score, not the whole score.
Quality Score vs Impression share
The share of impressions your ads received out of the total they were eligible for. A different measure.
FAQ
What is a good Quality Score?
Higher is better, but Google says the score should not be optimised as a goal1. Use a low score to find weak keywords, then judge those keywords by sales and margin.
Can I see Quality Score for every keyword?
Should Quality Score be in a monthly report?
As a note on a problem, yes. As a result, no: Google says it isn't a KPI1.
Sources
Let’s find what’s actually working.
Next step. Check what your reported ROAS looks like against margin. Use the Is your ROAS real? calculator.