Quality Score

Quality Score is a report card, not a price tag. Google Ads shows it at the keyword level on a 1 to 10 scale, built from three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Each component is rated above average, average, or below average compared with other advertisers who showed ads for the same keyword over the past 90 days.

The common mistake is treating Quality Score as an input to the ad auction. It isn’t. Google calculates ad quality fresh for every auction, using real-time signals such as the exact search, device, location, and time of day. That live quality feeds into Ad Rank alongside your bid, ad rank thresholds, and the expected impact of your assets. Quality Score is a summary of how those auctions have been going for that keyword.

So use it as a diagnostic. A keyword stuck at 4/10 with a below-average landing page experience tells you where to look, but raising the number itself is not the goal. Fixing the underlying problem is what lowers your cost per click and improves your ad position. A new keyword with too little data shows no score at all.