How to Improve Your Quality Score in Google Ads

Quality Score in Google Ads is a keyword-level diagnostic rated 1–10 that tells you where your ads, keywords, or landing pages are falling short. It summarizes three component signals, each reported as Above average, Average, or Below average:

Expected CTR — how likely users are to click your ad when it appears
Ad relevance — how closely your ad matches the intent behind the search query
Landing page experience — how useful and relevant your landing page is to someone who clicks

The single best first action: pull up your keyword list, add the component status columns, and filter for any keyword with a “Below average” rating. That status tells you exactly which lever to pull. Chasing the 1–10 number without reading the components is the most common waste of time in Google Ads optimization.

Key Takeaways

Quality Score in Google Ads is a diagnostic filter, not a KPI — the component statuses (Above/Average/Below average) tell you where to act, and conversion data tells you whether the fix worked.

Point	Details
Read the components, not just the number	Expected CTR, Ad relevance, and Landing page experience each point to a different fix.
Prioritize by spend first	Filter low-score keywords by cost before anything else — fix the expensive ones first.
Quick wins come from ad copy	Headline-to-keyword match and specific CTAs move Ad relevance and Expected CTR fastest.
Landing page fixes scale further	One page improvement lifts Quality Score for every keyword pointing to that page.
Envisionmarketingagency	Provides full Google Ads audits with component-based fix roadmaps tied to CPA and conversion goals.

What does Quality Score actually measure in Google Ads?
How the three Quality Score components work
What Quality Score does and doesn’t tell you
How to find Quality Score and component data in Google Ads
Practical steps to improve each Quality Score component
How Quality Score relates to your ad costs and positioning
What doesn’t actually affect Quality Score
How to triage low-scoring keywords across an account
Agency-style audit checklist for Quality Score improvements
What agencies see that most advertisers miss
Envisionmarketingagency can audit and fix your Quality Score
Sources

What does Quality Score actually measure in Google Ads?

Quality Score is a retrospective summary, not a live performance gauge. According to Google Ads Help, it reflects recent search impression history and compares your keyword’s performance against other advertisers competing on similar queries. A score of 7 means your keyword is performing above the field on those three components. A score of 3 means at least one component is dragging the whole signal down.

Google provides this metric for one reason: to help you find weak spots. It is not a KPI you should average across a campaign or report to a client as a headline number.

A branded keyword like “your company name + service” will almost always score 8–10 because the ad, the query, and the landing page are perfectly aligned. A broad, high-competition keyword like “marketing agency” might sit at 4–6 because dozens of advertisers are competing with equally relevant ads. That difference is structural, not a sign that something is broken.

How the three Quality Score components work

Each component status gives you a different repair instruction. Here is what each one measures and what a “Below average” rating is telling you to fix.

Expected CTR measures how often users click your ad relative to how often it shows. Google normalizes this for ad position, so bidding higher to force a top spot won’t artificially raise your Expected CTR rating. The signal comes from your ad text itself — the headline, the value proposition, and whether the copy gives someone a real reason to click.

Ad relevance measures how closely your ad copy matches the keyword’s search intent. A single ad group stuffed with 40 loosely related keywords will almost always show “Below average” here because no single ad can speak precisely to all of them. Tightly themed ad groups, where the keyword and the headline share the same language, consistently outperform bloated ones.

Landing page experience measures what happens after the click. Google evaluates relevance, transparency, and ease of navigation. A landing page that promises “free consultation” in the ad but buries the form three scrolls down under unrelated content will score poorly here.

Component	Below average usually means	Primary fix
Expected CTR	Ad copy isn’t compelling or relevant enough to earn clicks	Rewrite headlines; A/B test specific CTAs
Ad relevance	Keywords and ad text don’t share the same language or intent	Split ad groups; match headline to keyword
Landing page experience	Page doesn’t deliver on the ad’s promise, loads slowly, or is hard to use on mobile	Improve message match; fix page speed; simplify mobile UX

What Quality Score does and doesn’t tell you

The 1–10 score is a historical summary, built from roughly the past 90 days of impression data. Google’s whitepaper on Quality Score makes this explicit: the account-level score is not the same signal Google uses in the real-time auction. Auction-time ad quality is recalculated for every single auction and pulls in signals the 1–10 score doesn’t capture: device type, user location, time of day, the exact search query, and which ad assets are eligible to show.

What this means in practice:

A keyword with a Quality Score of 6 might still win auctions at a competitive CPC if the auction-time signals are strong
A keyword with a Quality Score of 9 can still underperform if conversion intent is low
Bidding more does not raise Quality Score — the score reflects user experience signals, not spend level

Common misconceptions worth correcting:

“Moving a keyword to a new ad group will fix its score.” It won’t, unless the ad text or landing page it points to also changes. Quality Score follows the user experience tied to that keyword’s served ads and landing pages, not its structural location in the account.
“Quality Score is the primary metric to optimize.” Google’s own guidance says the opposite. Treat it as a filter to find problems, then measure success by conversion rate and CPA.
“A low score means you should pause the keyword.” Sometimes a keyword with a score of 4 still meets your CPA goal. Check conversion data before making that call.

How to find Quality Score and component data in Google Ads

The columns are hidden by default. Here is how to add them.

Step	Action
1	In Google Ads, go to Campaigns > Keywords
2	Click the Columns icon (top right of the table)
3	Select Modify columns
4	Open the Quality score section
5	Add: Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad relevance, Landing Page Exp.
6	To see historical data, also add: Quality Score (hist.), Exp. CTR (hist.), Ad relevance (hist.), Landing Page Exp. (hist.)
7	Click Apply, then use Segment > Day to track changes over time

Google Ads Help documents these exact steps for adding Quality Score and historical component columns.

A few things to watch for during setup: if a keyword shows a dash instead of a score, it doesn’t have enough exact-match impression history yet. Broad-match keywords may inherit a score from an exact-match keyword in the same ad group if impressions exist. Filter your keyword list by spend or impressions before exporting to CSV — there’s no point auditing a keyword that has served three impressions in six months.

Pro Tip: Sort your keyword list by spend descending, then filter for Quality Score below 6. That combination surfaces the keywords costing you the most money with the weakest user experience signals — your highest-priority fixes.

Practical steps to improve each Quality Score component

Google’s guidance on using Quality Score recommends reviewing component statuses, improving ad relevance, raising CTR, and updating landing pages for message match and speed. Here is how to execute that in priority order.

Do this first (quick wins, under one week)

Add the component columns and export your keyword list to CSV
Filter for keywords with spend above your average CPA and a component status of “Below average”
For any “Below average” Ad relevance: check whether the keyword appears in the ad headline. If it doesn’t, rewrite the headline to include it or a close variant
For any “Below average” Expected CTR: swap in a more specific CTA (“Get a free quote in 24 hours” beats “Learn more”)
Run responsive search ads with at least 8–10 distinct headlines so Google can test combinations

Medium effort (one to three weeks)

Split large, unfocused ad groups into tightly themed groups. If one ad group contains “digital marketing agency,” “marketing firm,” and “online marketing services,” split them into separate groups with dedicated ads for each theme. This is one of the most reliable ways to move Ad relevance from Average to Above average.

Higher effort (landing page work)

Landing page fixes take longer but often produce the biggest score movement. The core principle is message match: the headline on your landing page should reflect the language in your ad. If your ad says “Custom Google Ads Management,” the landing page headline should not say “Full-Service Digital Marketing.” Building landing pages with strong message match is one of the fastest ways to move Landing page experience from Below average to Average or above.

Page speed matters too. A page that takes more than three seconds to load on mobile will drag Landing page experience down regardless of how good the content is.

Pro Tip: When running A/B ad copy tests, change one variable at a time — headline only, or CTA only — and hold the landing page constant. Changing both simultaneously makes it impossible to know which change drove the CTR shift. Run each test for at least two weeks or until you have statistically meaningful impressions.

How Quality Score relates to your ad costs and positioning

Ad Rank determines where your ad appears and what you pay per click. Google calculates Ad Rank using your bid, auction-time ad quality signals, expected impact of ad assets, and the context of the search. The 1–10 Quality Score is not directly plugged into that formula, but the underlying user experience signals it summarizes are.

Here is a practical way to think about it: two advertisers bid $5 on the same keyword. Advertiser A has strong Expected CTR and a well-matched landing page. Advertiser B has weak CTR signals and a generic landing page. Advertiser A will typically pay less per click and rank higher because Google’s auction rewards ads that users are more likely to find useful. The system is designed to surface the best user experience, not the highest bid.

Google’s Quality Score documentation reports scores on a 1–10 scale with component statuses of Above average, Average, or Below average. WordStream’s practitioner guide offers a useful orientation: scores in the higher range are generally strong, mid-range scores are common and workable, and low scores signal a real alignment problem between keyword, ad, and landing page. Treat those ranges as starting points, not hard rules — a keyword scoring 5 that converts at a strong CPA is not a problem to fix.

What doesn’t actually affect Quality Score

A few persistent myths keep advertisers focused on the wrong things.

Bidding higher does not raise Quality Score. Expected CTR is normalized for position, so a higher bid that forces a top placement won’t move the needle on that component.
Account structure changes alone don’t change scores. Moving a keyword to a new campaign or ad group without changing the ad text or landing page it serves produces no Quality Score change.
Display Network and Search Partners targeting don’t affect your Search Quality Score on Google.com. Google documents this explicitly — search ad quality is evaluated on Google Search traffic, not partner placements.
Pausing and re-enabling keywords doesn’t reset or improve scores. The history follows the keyword.

Where to focus instead: the alignment between keyword intent, ad copy language, and landing page content. That triangle is what Quality Score is measuring, and it’s the only place where real improvements happen.

How to triage low-scoring keywords across an account

A systematic approach beats random fixes. Here is a repeatable workflow.

Export your keyword list with Quality Score, component statuses, spend, impressions, conversions, and CPA columns included
Sort by spend descending and filter for Quality Score 1–6. High-spend, low-score keywords are your first priority — they are costing you the most for the weakest user experience
Segment by campaign type. Search campaigns with exact-match or phrase-match keywords are most actionable. Broad-match keywords with low scores often need keyword-level negative lists added before ad copy changes make sense
Assign a fix path based on the “Below average” component:
- Expected CTR below average: ad copy rewrite, new CTA, responsive search ad expansion
- Ad relevance below average: ad group split, headline keyword insertion
- Landing page experience below average: message match audit, page speed test, mobile UX review
Set a testing window of 2–4 weeks per change. Quality Score updates as new impression data accumulates, so changes made today won’t show in the score immediately
Evaluate impact using CTR, conversion rate, and CPA — not just the Quality Score movement. A keyword that improves from 4 to 6 but shows no CPA improvement may need a different fix entirely

Agency-style audit checklist for Quality Score improvements

This is the sequence Envisionmarketingagency runs when auditing a Google Ads account for Quality Score issues.

Account snapshot (Day 1)

Pull Quality Score and component columns for all active keywords
Flag any keyword with spend above average CPA and a score below 6
Note which campaigns have the highest concentration of low-scoring keywords

Keyword triage (Days 2–3)

Sort by spend, filter by score, assign component-based fix paths
Identify keywords with a dash (no score) and check impression volume
Flag keywords with low Quality Score but strong conversion data — these may not need fixing

Creative inventory (Days 3–4)

Audit ad copy in low-scoring ad groups for keyword-to-headline match
Check whether responsive search ads have enough headline variety (8+ headlines)
Use ChatGPT for ad copywriting to generate 10–15 headline variants quickly, then select the strongest for testing

Landing page audit (Days 4–5)

Check message match between ad headline and landing page headline for each flagged keyword
Run a mobile page speed test (Google PageSpeed Insights is the standard tool)
Identify pages with form placement issues, unclear CTAs, or content that doesn’t match the ad’s promise

Prioritized roadmap and testing calendar

Rank fixes by effort and expected impact: ad copy changes first, ad group splits second, landing page rebuilds third
Assign owners and deadlines for each fix
Set a 30-day review checkpoint to evaluate CTR, conversion rate, and Quality Score movement

Pro Tip: When using ChatGPT to generate ad copy variants, give it the keyword, the landing page headline, and your top competitor’s ad copy as context. Ask for 15 headline options that match the keyword’s intent and include a specific CTA. You’ll get usable variants in minutes instead of hours — then A/B test the top three.

What agencies see that most advertisers miss

The most common mistake isn’t ignoring Quality Score — it’s treating the 1–10 number as the goal. Clients come in having spent weeks trying to push every keyword to a 9 or 10, and when you look at their conversion data, the keywords they “fixed” aren’t driving revenue. Meanwhile, a keyword sitting at 5 with a strong CPA gets paused because the score looks bad.

The second mistake is a slow testing cadence. Ad copy tests that run for two weeks with 50 impressions tell you nothing. Quality Score changes require enough impression volume to be statistically meaningful. If a keyword doesn’t have the traffic to support a proper test, fix the landing page instead — that change applies to every keyword pointing to that page simultaneously.

Envisionmarketingagency structures Quality Score remediation as a business process tied to conversion metrics, not a cosmetic cleanup. Every fix is tied to a specific component status, every test has a defined evaluation window, and every decision is weighed against CPA and conversion volume. The Google whitepaper on Quality Score puts it plainly: do the work that helps users, and the score will follow.

Envisionmarketingagency can audit and fix your Quality Score

Spending money on Google Ads while your Quality Score components sit at “Below average” is the paid search equivalent of leaving the tap running. Envisionmarketingagency offers a full Google Ads audit that covers keyword triage, component-by-component fix prioritization, ad copy testing, and landing page message match review — delivered as a prioritized roadmap you can act on immediately.

The agency has managed paid search for over 550 clients since 2020, with a process built around conversion metrics and CPA targets rather than vanity scores. If your campaigns are burning budget on low-quality keywords, the audit identifies exactly where and gives you a sequenced plan to fix it. For advertisers who also need landing page work, Envisionmarketingagency’s digital marketing services cover the full stack — from ad copy to page builds to ongoing reporting. Request your audit at Envisionmarketingagency.

Sources

The factual backbone of this guide comes from Google’s own documentation and practitioner resources. These are worth bookmarking for ongoing reference.

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