- Quality Score is scored 110 from three factors: expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
- A higher Quality Score lowers your cost per click and improves your ad rank — highrelevance ads can outrank higherbidding competitors.
- Relevance is the fix: tightly match keyword, ad copy, and landing page, and your score improves.
- Quality Score is a diagnostic, not a target — optimizing purely to raise the number without improving real relevance rarely lifts ROI.
- The three factors behind the score
- | Factor | What it measures | How to improve |
Quality Score is Google’s 1-10 rating of how relevant your keywords, ads, and landing page are to a user, and it is the single biggest lever on your cost per click — a high score can discount your CPC by as much as 50% while a low one inflates it. It is built from expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
Key takeaways
- Quality Score is scored 1-10 from three factors: expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
- A higher Quality Score lowers your cost per click and improves your ad rank — high-relevance ads can outrank higher-bidding competitors.
- Relevance is the fix: tightly match keyword, ad copy, and landing page, and your score improves.
- Quality Score is a diagnostic, not a target — optimizing purely to raise the number without improving real relevance rarely lifts ROI.
The three factors behind the score
| Factor | What it measures | How to improve |
|---|---|---|
| Expected CTR | Likelihood your ad gets clicked | Write ad copy that mirrors the keyword |
| Ad relevance | Match between keyword and ad | Tightly themed ad groups |
| Landing page experience | Relevance and usability of your page | Match page to query, fix speed and clarity |
“Quality Score is Google telling you how well your ad answers the query. Listen to it — it is a pricing signal, not a vanity metric.” — Priya Sharma, AdsMG AI
How Quality Score lowers your cost
Your actual cost per click is not your bid alone — it is your bid adjusted by Quality Score and the ad rank you need to show. A high score means Google charges you less for the same position because your ad is more relevant to users. In practice, moving a keyword from a 3 to a 7 can cut its CPC by a third or more, freeing budget for more clicks.
How to improve a low Quality Score
- Split mixed-intent ad groups into tighter themes so each ad matches one intent.
- Rewrite headlines and descriptions to use the keyword’s language directly.
- Send the ad group to a landing page that addresses the exact query, not a generic page.
- Add negative keywords to stop your ad showing on irrelevant searches that drag CTR down.
- Check the score’s three components in the Keywords report and fix whichever is labeled below average.
Related reading
Frequently Asked Questions
Use these answers as the quick-reference layer for common objections, buying questions, and implementation concerns.
What is a good Quality Score?+
A score of 7 or above is considered good. But the metric is relative to your own keywords — focus on improving belowaverage components rather than chasing a specific number.
Does Quality Score really affect cost?+
Yes. Quality Score is a major input to ad rank, and higher scores mean lower cost per click for the same position. Highrelevance ads can outrank competitors who bid more.
Can I check my Quality Score?+
Yes. In Google Ads, add the Quality Score column to your Keywords report, then click the score to see its expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience breakdown.
Priya Sharma — Senior marketing analyst at AdsMG AI who has run 40+ AI-optimized ad accounts across Google, Meta, and LinkedIn.
Turn the ideas in this article into live campaigns, content, and creative tests.
AdsMG AI helps growth teams move from strategy to execution without stitching together separate tools for copy, optimization, and reporting.