Quality Score is Google's 1-10 rating of the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. It is calculated from three components: Expected Click-Through Rate (how likely users are to click your ad for the keyword), Ad Relevance (how closely your ad copy matches the searcher's intent), and Landing Page Experience (the speed, relevance, and usability of the page users reach after clicking). A higher Quality Score directly reduces your cost-per-click — effectively making your ad budget go further — and improves your Ad Rank, enabling better positions at lower bids.
The economic impact of Quality Score is substantial. Google's own data shows that advertisers with Quality Scores of 8-10 pay approximately 20-40% less per click than advertisers with Quality Scores of 3-4 for equivalent ad positions. Over the course of a campaign spending £5,000/month in ad spend, this translates to thousands of pounds in savings — or the equivalent in additional clicks for the same budget.
How to improve Quality Score
- Improve Expected CTR — write compelling ad headlines that are specific, relevant, and differentiated; test multiple variants
- Improve Ad Relevance — ensure each ad group contains tightly grouped, highly similar keywords; write ad copy that explicitly uses the keywords being targeted
- Improve Landing Page Experience — make landing pages fast (Core Web Vitals), mobile-optimised, and directly relevant to the ad's promise
- Increase account historical CTR — newer accounts start with lower expected CTR; consistent high-CTR performance improves historical signals over time
- Use keyword insertion — dynamically insert the user's search term into ad headlines for maximum keyword relevance
- Match search intent precisely — ads and landing pages should deliver exactly what the ad headline promises
Quality Scores of 7-10 are considered good; 8-10 indicates your ads are highly relevant and well-optimised. Scores of 5-6 are average. Scores below 5 indicate significant optimisation opportunities. Not all keywords will achieve high Quality Scores — very broad or competitive keywords may score lower even with good ads and landing pages. Focus optimisation effort on your highest-spend, highest-impression keywords first — these have the largest absolute impact on campaign cost efficiency.
No — Quality Score and Ad Rank are related but distinct. Quality Score is a diagnostic metric (1-10) that signals how relevant Google considers your ads and landing pages. Ad Rank is the actual auction result that determines ad position, calculated from: your bid, your Quality Score, your expected impact of ad formats and extensions, and the context of the search (device, location, time). Quality Score is one input into Ad Rank, but Ad Rank also incorporates bid amount and extension impact.