Google Ads Quality Score: What It Actually Measures and How to Fix It

Google Ads Quality Score is a 1 to 10 diagnostic that Google assigns to each keyword in a Search campaign, built from expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. It is not plugged into the ad auction directly, but the same three signals are, which is why fixing a low score usually lowers what you actually pay per click.

I check Quality Score on every Search account I manage, not because the number itself matters, but because it is the fastest way to see which part of a campaign is quietly costing more than it should. This guide covers what Quality Score actually measures, how it differs from the real-time ad quality that affects your auction results, how to add the columns and read them properly, and the fixes that work for each component.

What Quality Score actually is

Quality Score is a 1 to 10 rating Google Ads calculates for each keyword in a Search campaign, and it exists purely as a diagnostic, not as something the auction reads directly. Google's own documentation describes it as a way to gauge how your ad quality compares with other advertisers, calculated at the keyword level and updated by comparing your ads against competitors shown for identical or very similar searches over roughly the past 90 days.

Two things about that definition trip up most business owners. First, Quality Score is a comparison, not an absolute measure, so the same ad and landing page can score differently depending on who else is bidding on that keyword this month. Second, Google is explicit that the number should not be treated as a key performance indicator or averaged across your account. A single weak keyword dragging down an account-wide average tells you almost nothing useful. What matters is the score on the specific keywords that are actually spending your budget.

If you are new to setting up a Google Ads account, Quality Score will not appear on a brand-new keyword until it has picked up enough impressions, so do not expect to judge it on day one.

The three components Quality Score is built from

Quality Score is the combination of three separately graded components, and every fix later in this guide maps back to one of them. Each component gets its own status, Below average, Average or Above average, rather than its own number, and the overall 1 to 10 score is Google's summary of the three together.

Expected CTR looks purely at click likelihood, not conversion likelihood, so a keyword can carry a strong Expected CTR while still converting badly once someone lands on your site. Ad relevance is judged at the ad group level, which is why one overloaded ad group is such a common cause of a low score across several keywords at once. Landing page experience is the only component that depends on something outside Google Ads entirely, your actual website, which is also why it is the one small business accounts most often neglect.

How to check your Quality Score

Quality Score lives in the columns menu of your Keywords view, not on the account dashboard, so most small accounts never turn it on. Open a Search campaign, go to Keywords, click the columns icon in the top right of the statistics table, and look for the Quality Score section. From there you can add Quality Score itself, plus the three component columns, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Exp., individually.

Add all four rather than just the headline number. The single 1 to 10 score tells you something is off, but only the three component columns tell you what. A keyword showing a 5 with Below average landing page experience and everything else Average needs a completely different fix than a 5 caused by weak ad relevance.

You will sometimes see a dash instead of a number or status. That means Google does not have enough exact-match search volume on that keyword yet to calculate anything reliable, which is common on new or very long-tail keywords. It is not a sign of a problem, just a sign there is not enough data yet, so leave it and revisit once the keyword has picked up real traffic.

Quality Score, ad quality and Ad Rank: why there is no public formula

Quality Score and the ad quality that actually feeds into Ad Rank are related but not the same thing, and conflating them is where most of the confusion, and every search for a quality score formula, comes from. Google's page on ad quality states directly that Quality Score is a diagnostic tool and that these scores are not inputs in the ad auction.

What actually happens at auction time is a separate, real-time assessment of ad quality, built from the same three underlying ideas, expected clickthrough, relevance and landing page usefulness, but calculated fresh for each individual search rather than reported as a static keyword-level number. That real-time ad quality combines with your bid, the competitiveness of that specific auction, the searcher's context and the expected impact of your ad formats and extensions to produce Ad Rank, which decides whether your ad shows and roughly what you pay.

Google has never published the exact weighting behind either calculation, and it is unlikely to, since publishing it would hand every advertiser a way to game the system rather than actually improve their ads. The honest answer to "what is the quality score formula" is that there is not one you can plug numbers into. There are three named inputs, and the way to move the outcome is to genuinely improve each one, not to reverse-engineer a score.

Fixing expected CTR

Expected CTR is Google's estimate of how likely your ad is to get clicked for a given keyword, and the fastest way to move it is rewriting the ad, not raising the bid. Google's own guidance on improving this component points to making the offer more compelling, aligning the ad's details with what the keyword implies someone wants, and highlighting a specific benefit rather than a generic claim.

Testing different calls to action, Buy, Book, Get a Quote, Call Now, against each other over a few weeks usually surfaces a clear winner for a given service. Be careful with overly broad, safe copy written to appeal to everyone: it often reads as generic and pulls Expected CTR down rather than up. A specific line, say "Same-day AC repair, Baner and Aundh" instead of "Best AC repair service", tends to perform better precisely because it matches what a searcher with that exact problem is looking for.

Fixing ad relevance

Ad relevance measures how closely your ad matches what someone typed, and a Below average rating almost always means an ad group is covering too much ground. If one ad group holds keywords for teeth whitening, root canals and dental implants, no single ad can honestly speak to all three, and Google's relevance grading reflects that.

The fix is structural: split the ad group so each one covers a single theme, with ad copy written specifically for that theme's keywords, mirroring the language people actually search rather than internal product names. This is the same discipline that underpins good keyword research: keywords that share intent belong together, and keywords that do not should live in separate ad groups even if they technically belong to the same business. If broad match keywords are pulling in queries your ad groups were never built for, tightening your negative keyword list alongside this restructuring usually improves relevance further.

Fixing landing page experience

Landing page experience judges what happens after the click, and it is the component most Indian small business sites fail first. Google looks at whether the page's content genuinely matches what the ad promised, how fast it loads, and how usable it is on a phone, since the overwhelming majority of Indian search traffic arrives on mobile.

Start by making sure the page someone lands on actually mentions the service they searched for, rather than sending every click to a generic homepage. If your account sends "root canal" clicks and "teeth whitening" clicks to the same page, the mismatch works against you on both keywords at once. From there, speed and mobile usability matter more than most business owners expect. My Core Web Vitals guide covers how to read and fix the loading and layout issues that quietly hurt this component, and my landing page guide walks through the anatomy of a page built to convert once someone actually arrives. Once the page itself is sound, the next layer is what happens on it. My guide to conversion rate optimisation covers testing and improving what the page does after the click, which is a good next step once Quality Score stops being the bottleneck.

Why a low score on a low-intent keyword may not matter

A Below average landing page score on a keyword that brings you one click a month is not worth the same urgency as the same rating on your highest-spending term. Say an orthodontist in Viman Nagar runs twenty keywords, and one broad, rarely searched term shows a weak score while the five keywords carrying most of the budget all read Average or better. Spending an afternoon rewriting a page for that one low-volume keyword is time better spent tightening the ad groups actually driving spend.

This is also why Google is explicit that Quality Score should not be aggregated or treated as a single account-wide target. A keyword with very little competing data, because almost nobody else bids on it, can sit at a middling score indefinitely without that number reflecting anything you are doing wrong. Prioritise by cost, not by which keyword's score looks worst on the page, and a keyword that spends heavily and converts well is not a problem just because its Quality Score is not a perfect 10.

How to check and improve Quality Score

The order below turns Quality Score from a number you glance at into a routine that actually lowers cost per click, run once a month on your top-spending keywords.

Step 1: Add the Quality Score columns to your keyword view

In the Keywords view of a Search campaign, open the columns menu and add Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Exp. as separate columns. The common pitfall is adding only the overall score and missing which component is actually the problem. Verify it worked by confirming you can see all four columns, not just one, in the statistics table.

Step 2: Sort by spend and read the components, not just the number

Sort your keyword list by cost over the last 30 days and start diagnosing from the top spenders down. The pitfall is chasing a low score on a keyword that spends almost nothing while your biggest cost driver sits unreviewed. Verify by listing your top ten keywords by spend alongside their component ratings before deciding what to fix first.

Step 3: Fix expected CTR with ad copy that matches intent

Rewrite headlines to mirror the language people actually search, lead with a specific benefit, and test two or three different calls to action. The pitfall is writing broader, safer copy to appeal to everyone, which usually drags Expected CTR down rather than up. Verify by checking the Expected CTR column again once the new ads have run for a week or two with enough impressions to register.

Step 4: Fix ad relevance by tightening ad groups

Split any ad group covering more than one distinct product or service into smaller, tightly themed groups, so one ad can honestly answer every keyword inside it. The pitfall is leaving ten unrelated keywords in a single group and expecting one ad to feel relevant to all of them. Verify by reading through each ad group's keyword list and confirming one ad could genuinely answer every term in it.

Step 5: Fix landing page experience

Send each ad group to a page whose headline and content match the keyword, then check mobile display and load speed before anything else. The pitfall is sending every click to the homepage regardless of what was searched. Verify by opening the page on a mid-range phone over 4G and confirming it loads in a few seconds and clearly answers the search.

Step 6: Recheck after real traffic, not immediately

Wait one to two weeks for fresh impressions and clicks under the new ads and page before judging whether anything actually moved. The pitfall is refreshing the columns the same afternoon and concluding the fix failed. Verify by comparing the component ratings after real traffic against where they started, not against yesterday's numbers.

Common mistakes with Quality Score

Chasing the single number instead of the three components. A 6 caused by a slow landing page and a 6 caused by an overloaded ad group need completely different fixes. Treating both the same way wastes effort on the wrong lever.

Raising bids to compensate for a low score. A higher bid can win back a position a weak ad quality lost, but it does nothing to fix the underlying problem, and you keep paying the premium every single click.

One ad group for an entire service list. Cramming every keyword a business could plausibly rank for into one ad group is the single most common cause of a Below average ad relevance rating I see in small accounts.

Ignoring dash keywords, assuming they are broken. A dash means too little search volume to score, not a fault. Chasing a fix for a keyword that has not generated enough impressions yet is wasted effort.

Looking for a formula instead of fixing the components. Time spent searching for an exact quality score formula is time not spent rewriting an ad or fixing a landing page, and only the second one actually changes anything.

Judging a fix too soon. Component ratings update on a rolling basis using recent data, so checking the day after a change rarely shows movement yet.

Honest limits: what Quality Score cannot tell you

Quality Score cannot tell you whether a keyword is worth bidding on at all, only whether your ad and page are doing a reasonable job for the auctions you are already in. A keyword can carry a perfect score and still lose money if the traffic it brings rarely turns into paying customers, because Quality Score has no idea what a lead or a sale is actually worth to you.

It also does not extend to every campaign type in the same form. If you are considering Performance Max for a small business, do not expect the keyword-level Quality Score columns to carry over, since that campaign type is not organised around keywords at all. And a perfect score on one keyword says nothing about the ten others in the same ad group, which is why a full account review, not a single number, is what actually moves results. If your account has clicks but the leads still are not showing up, the issue is often downstream of Quality Score entirely. My guide to why Google Ads is not converting and my breakdown of reducing cost per lead both cover that territory once ad quality itself is no longer the bottleneck. For most small accounts, checking Quality Score once a month alongside a normal review of budget and local targeting is enough. It was never meant to be watched daily.

Frequently asked questions

Is Quality Score a ranking factor in Google Ads?

No, not directly. Google states plainly that Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction. It is a diagnostic score built from the same underlying signals, expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, that do feed into Ad Rank in real time during each auction. A low Quality Score does not itself push your ad down the page, but the weak ad quality it is reporting on usually does, which is why fixing the components tends to lower your cost per click even though the 1 to 10 number is never plugged into the auction directly.

What counts as a good Quality Score?

There is no universal good score, because Quality Score is relative to what other advertisers are bidding on the same or similar searches, not a fixed target. A keyword sitting at 7 or above with all three components at Average or Above average is generally healthy. What matters more than the single number is which component is dragging the score down, since a 5 caused by a fixable landing page issue is a very different problem from a 5 caused by an ad group that covers five unrelated services.

Why does my Quality Score show a dash instead of a number?

A dash means Google does not yet have enough exact-match search volume on that keyword to calculate a reliable score, not that something is broken. This is common on newly added keywords, long-tail terms, or accounts with very low search volume for a particular phrase. Give the keyword more time and traffic before worrying about it, and focus your attention on the keywords that do show a live Quality Score, since those are the ones with enough data behind the number to act on.

Is there a Quality Score formula I can calculate myself?

No. Google has never published the exact formula behind Quality Score, and the searches for one usually come from wanting to predict or reverse-engineer the number. What Google does publish is the three inputs, expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, and how each is rated against competitors over roughly the past 90 days. Treat the three components as your working formula instead: fix whichever one is rated below average, and the overall score moves as a result.

Does Quality Score apply to Performance Max campaigns?

Not in the same form. Quality Score is a keyword-level diagnostic built for Search campaigns, and Performance Max is not organised around keywords, so it does not display a comparable 1 to 10 score. The same underlying ideas, whether your creative is relevant and whether your landing page delivers what it promises, still affect how well a Performance Max campaign performs. You just cannot check them through the same columns you would use on a Search campaign.

Related guides

• Performance Max for small business: when it works
• How much to budget for Google Ads
• Google Ads setup for small business
• How to build a high-converting landing page
• Core Web Vitals guide
• Why your Google Ads are not converting
• Negative keywords in Google Ads
• How to reduce cost per lead

Your next step

Open your highest-spending Search campaign, add the four columns from the steps above, and sort by cost. Fix whichever component is rated below average on your top five keywords first, not the cheapest ones. If you would rather have someone audit the account with you, get in touch.