Contents
- Quality Score rates keyword relevance from 1 to 10, and exists only at that level: not at ad group, not at campaign.
- It rests on three components: expected CTR, ad relevance, landing page experience.
- It is a diagnostic indicator, not an objective: improving it serves to lower cost, not to produce a pretty number.
Definition
Quality Score is a rating Google assigns to each keyword to estimate how relevant the keyword, ad and landing page are, taken together, to the searcher's query.
Formula
There is no public formula. The score aggregates three components, each rated above average, average or below average: expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience.
Worked example
A keyword scores 4 out of 10, with below-average expected CTR and an average landing page. The diagnosis is clear: the problem lies in the ads, not the site. Rewriting headlines to pick up the exact wording of the query acts on the right component; rebuilding the page would change nothing.
Orders of magnitude
A score of 7 to 10 reflects good coherence between keyword, ad and page. Below 5, there is almost always something to fix. Brand keywords naturally score high, which makes the account average meaningless unless you isolate them.
The most common mistakes
- Looking for a Quality Score at campaign level. There is none. Any average calculated at that level is a reconstruction, not a Google figure.
- Treating the score as an objective. A keyword at 6 that converts beats a keyword at 9 that does not.
- Reading the score without its three components. They are what tell you what to fix; the score alone gives you nothing actionable.
Where to find the metric
In Google Ads only, the Keywords tab, columns to enable: Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad relevance, Landing page experience. Three history columns let you follow the change over time.
Frequently asked questions
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