Quality Score: Why It Matters and 6 Steps to Improve It

By mbretous@hubspot.com (Martina Bretous)

Running an ad campaign is no small feat. From narrowing down your target audience to designing your landing page, there are many pieces to the puzzle.

Once you put in all that work, you want to make sure your ad is ready for bidding. Google Ads helps advertisers ensure their ad quality is high by assigning them a quality score.

Not sure what that is? Let’s cover what a Quality Score is, how to see it in your account, and how to improve it for your next campaign.

Google wants to match users to the most relevant ads because they only make money when users click the ad. So, if they consistently show low-quality ads, they won’t earn as much.

To determine an advertiser’s Quality Score, Google looks at how other advertisers have performed in the last 90 days for the exact same keywords. If there isn’t enough data gathered in that time frame, there will be no score displayed.

Does your Quality Score affect ad rank?

In the bidding process, your Quality Score is not considered by Google’s algorithm. Your Quality Score can signal how your ad will rank but it’s not a direct input in the auction.

However, there is a non-direct link between your Quality Score and your ad ranking. If you have a low Quality Score, that suggests that your ad doesn’t provide a good user experience. As a result, your ad may not rank well.

Think of the Quality Score as a diagnostic tool you can leverage to create a more relevant and useful ad for your target audience.

Now that you know how it works, let’s talk about the three components that make up your Quality Score.

Quality Score Components

In the past, the QS was a clickthrough rate (CTR) predictor. Before assigning Quality Scores, Google used CTR to weed out ads that were irrelevant or ads that should have a higher cost-per-click (CPC), according to the Search Engine Journal.

Today, the expected clickthrough rate is still one component of the Quality Score. It refers to the likelihood that your ad will be clicked once seen. Here are two additional factors that influence your Quality Score:

Ad relevance – How relevant your ad is to the keyword or ad group based on the user’s intent.
Landing page experience – How useful your landing page is once users click on your ad.

For each component, you’ll get a subscore: below average, average, or above average.

Despite popular belief, your Google Ads history also has no impact on your Quality Score. Here are additional factors that are not measured in your Quality Score: