Google Ads Quality Score Explained: How to Improve It

Paid Media Quality Score Google Ads PPC

Two advertisers bid on the same keyword. One pays $2 per click. The other pays $6. Same auction, same keyword, same budget available. The gap almost always comes down to one number sitting quietly in their dashboard: Quality Score. Here is what it actually measures, why it still matters in 2026, and the specific steps that move it.

Google Ads Quality Score is a rating from 1 to 10 that estimates the quality and relevance of your keyword, ad, and landing page compared to other advertisers targeting the same search.

A higher score signals to Google that your ad delivers a genuinely relevant experience, and Google rewards that with a lower cost per click and better ad placement.

We touched on the automation side of Google Ads in our piece on Google's updated Ads terms of service.

Quality Score sits underneath all of that automation, since even the smartest bidding strategy still has to compete in an auction where relevance quietly decides your final price.

1-10

is the scale Google Ads uses to rate keyword-level Quality Score in your dashboard

components make up the visible score: expected CTR, ad relevance, landing page experience

3-5x

higher cost per click reported on the same keyword sitting at a low score versus a strong one

What Google Ads Quality-Score Actually Measures

The visible score in your dashboard breaks down into exactly three components, each rated below average, average, or above average.

Expected CTR

Ad Relevance

Landing Page Experience

↓

Quality Score (1-10, shown at the keyword level)

Quality Score Bands: What Each Range Actually Means

Below 5
Investigate

5-6
Average

7-10
Strong

The Visible Score vs. the Real Auction-Time Score

This distinction trips up even experienced advertisers, and it is worth understanding clearly.

Video: "Quality Score Explained: The Truth About Ad Rank and Ad Quality" by Jyll Saskin Gales, Inside Google Ads — credit to the original creator, via YouTube

According to Adalysis' Quality Score guide, the number you see in your account is technically a diagnostic estimate.

A separate, real-time Quality-Score gets calculated fresh in every single auction and feeds directly into Ad Rank.

That live number is never displayed anywhere in your dashboard. Improving your visible score reliably improves the underlying auction-time score too, so it remains the right thing to optimize.

Five Ways to Actually Improve Your Quality Score

Tighten Your Keyword Match Types

According to Store Growers' 2026 Quality Score guide, low expected CTR is often caused by ads showing for search queries that are not actually closely related to your keywords, which broad or loosely matched keywords make worse.

Use Negative Keywords Aggressively

Negative keywords do not directly touch Quality Score, but removing irrelevant, low-converting traffic lifts your overall CTR, which indirectly pulls the score up over time.

Write Ad Copy for Semantic Relevance, Not Just Keyword Matching

According to Twosquares' 2026 Quality-Score guide, Google's systems now understand semantic relevance well enough that closely related phrasing, not exact keyword repetition, can register as highly relevant.

Make the Landing Page Match the Ad's Promise Exactly

A landing page should directly answer the specific problem implied by the keyword, not send traffic to a generic homepage. Mismatched intent between ad and page is one of the most common sources of a weak landing page experience score.

Fix the Technical Side of the Landing Page Too

According to Twosquares' guide referenced above, Google now weighs engagement and technical signals, including page load speed and mobile usability, not just text relevance, when scoring landing page experience.

Does Updating My Ads Instantly Reset the Quality Score?

Not quite, and the timing here matters for how you plan improvements. Tap through both scenarios.

According to Groas' 2026 Quality Score playbook, Quality Score is calculated at the keyword level, not the ad level. Updating your ad copy does not instantly reset or refresh the keyword's existing score.

The keyword retains its historical score until enough new performance data accumulates against the updated ads. Improved copy that genuinely lifts expected CTR and relevance gradually pulls the score up over time, which is why continuous testing matters more than a single one-time refresh.

Quality Score Components Compared

Component	What It Measures	Fastest Fix
Expected CTR	How likely your ad is to be clicked, relative to competitors	Tighter keyword match types, negative keywords
Ad Relevance	How closely ad copy matches the search query's intent	Ad copy aligned to semantic intent, not just keywords
Landing Page Experience	How useful and relevant the destination page is	Page content matches the keyword's specific problem

Quick Check: Is Your Quality-Score Costing You Money?

Some of my keywords show a Quality Score below 5 in Google Ads. My landing pages are generic pages, not built around specific keyword intent. I rely heavily on broad match keywords without a strong negative keyword list. I have not reviewed my Quality Score columns in Google Ads in the last month.

Check the boxes that apply to see how much this could be costing you.

How to Check Your Quality-Score in Google Ads

Open the Keywords view inside your campaign, then use the column customization menu to add the Quality Score column along with its three sub-component columns: expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

According to Factors' 2026 Quality-Score analysis guide, viewing all three sub-components side by side, not just the overall number, is what actually tells you which specific factor needs attention rather than leaving you guessing.

Is Quality Score Still Worth Tracking in 2026?

According to Smarketa's 2026 Quality Score guide, Google has gradually downplayed the metric in its own public messaging, pushing advertisers toward automated bidding and broader targeting instead.

Despite that shift, the underlying mechanics have not changed. A keyword sitting at a low score can still cost several times more per click than the same keyword at a strong score, and that gap compounds across hundreds or thousands of clicks a month.

According to DigiGrowth Lab's 2026 Quality-Score guide, a well-structured account built around genuine relevance can still outperform competitors spending significantly more, since Google continues to reward relevance over raw bid size.

Does Quality Score Vary Across Different Levels of Your Account?

Quality Score is calculated at the keyword level, but it does not exist in isolation from the rest of your account structure.

An ad group stuffed with loosely related keywords sharing the same ad copy tends to produce a mix of strong and weak scores, since the ad cannot be equally relevant to every keyword in the group.

Tightly themed ad groups, where every keyword shares nearly identical intent, make it far easier for a single piece of ad copy to score well across the board.

This is why account structure work, splitting broad ad groups into narrower, more tightly themed ones, is often the highest-leverage Quality Score fix available, even though it never appears explicitly labeled as a "Quality Score fix" in Google's own interface.

Quality Score Across Different Campaign Types

Quality Score, in its classic 1-to-10 form, applies specifically to Search campaigns, where keyword and query matching drive the whole system.

Performance Max and Display campaigns work differently, since Google assembles ads from a pool of assets you provide rather than matching a specific keyword to a specific ad.

For these campaign types, the practical equivalent of improving Quality Score is making sure your asset groups, headlines, descriptions, and images closely match the audience segment you are targeting, since that alignment is what actually drives a stronger effective CTR in these automated formats.

FAQs on Google Ads Quality Score

What is a good Google Ads Quality Score?

A score between 7 and 10 is considered strong and competitive. A score of 5 or 6 is average, usually with one weak component dragging it down. Anything below 5 is worth investigating.

Does Quality Score directly lower my cost per click?

Yes. A higher Quality Score signals relevance to Google, which typically results in a lower cost per click and better ad position compared to a lower-scoring competitor bidding on the same keyword.

Why does my Quality Score stay low even after I improve my ads?

Quality Score is calculated at the keyword level and retains its historical value until enough new performance data accumulates against your updated ads. Improvement is gradual, not instant.

Do negative keywords improve Quality Score directly?

Not directly, but they remove irrelevant, low-converting traffic, which raises your overall click-through rate. That improved CTR then indirectly lifts your Quality Score over time.

Is the Quality Score I see in my dashboard the same one used in the ad auction?

Not exactly. The visible score is a diagnostic estimate. A separate real-time Quality Score is calculated fresh in every auction and feeds into Ad Rank, though improving your visible score reliably improves the auction-time score too.

Should I still track Quality Score if I use automated bidding?

Yes. Even with automated bidding, the underlying relevance signals behind Quality Score still influence your cost per click and ad position, so it remains a useful diagnostic even as bidding itself becomes more automated.

What We Learn Today

Quality Score rates keywords from 1 to 10 based on relevance and expected performance.

Three components make it up: expected CTR, ad relevance, landing page experience.

A low score can cost several times more per click than a strong one.

The visible score is a diagnostic; a separate real score runs in every auction.

Updating ads does not instantly reset a keyword's historical score.

Relevance still beats raw bid size, even in an increasingly automated auction.