Quality Score

Quality Score is built from three components Google reports separately in the account interface: Expected Clickthrough Rate (how likely the ad is to be clicked when shown for that keyword), Ad Relevance (how closely the ad's message matches the intent behind the keyword), and Landing Page Experience (how relevant, transparent, and easy to navigate the destination page is). Each component is graded as "below average," "average," or "above average" against other advertisers competing for the same keyword, and the three roll up into a single 1-10 score.

It matters because low scores are expensive twice over: they correlate with lower ad positions and higher costs per click for the same bid, since Google's Ad Rank formula factors in the real-time equivalents of these signals alongside the bid itself. Advertisers who chase rank purely by raising bids while ignoring relevance and landing page quality typically pay more per click than competitors solving the underlying mismatch.

One common misunderstanding is treating Quality Score as something Google plugs directly into the live auction. Google has clarified that the 1-10 score itself is a historical, aggregated diagnostic — the actual auction uses real-time, query-specific versions of the same underlying signals. In practice this distinction rarely changes what to do about a low score: rewrite ad copy to match search intent more precisely, or fix a landing page that doesn't deliver what the ad promised.