Google AdWords Quality Scores: Explained


If you are an online advertiser, chances are you are familiar with Google AdWords, the platform businesses use to place ads on Google search results pages, Youtube, Gmail, etc. And if you are using AdWords, you are likely aware of a metric they call the ‘Quality Score’.

What is the Google AdWords Quality Score?

Quality Score is a value that Google applies to each ad in an advertiser’s account. It is used to measure exactly what you would expect, the quality of the ad. But quality in this case means a number of different things.

  • The relevance of the ad to the keywords it is showing up for
  • The relevance of the landing page the ad is directing people to
  • The usability of the landing page and website the ad is directing people to
  • The history of the domain name
  • The past user experience with that ad and landing page
  • And more…

Each ad is assigned a Quality Score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

What is the Google AdWords Quality Score use for?

Google uses the Quality Score when deciding which ads to show on which searches. Since Quality Score factors in how likely someone is to click on your ad, and how likely they are to like what they see when they do, it is a good measure to use to control the user experience for their searches.

Obviously quality score is not the only factor they are looking at. They also take into account the relative bids of every advertiser targeting that keyword phrase, the type of bids, and the closeness of the match between the exact search phrase and the targeted keywords.

But in general, ads with higher quality scores are more likely to show more often, higher on the page, and cost less per click than ads with lower quality scores. For that reason, as an advertiser, you want higher Quality Scores.

How do you improve your Google AdWords Quality Score?

Knowing the factors that go into determining Quality Score also help you decide what you need to do to improve low Quality Scores. In addition, within the AdWords platform you can get recommendations from Google on how to improve Quality Score.

Generally speaking, there are three ways you can improve your Quality Score:

  1. Improve the relevance of the ad to the keyword phrase
  2. Improve the quality and relevance of the landing page
  3. Improve the click-through rate of the ad itself

That’s the Google AdWords Quality Score in a nutshell. Let me know if you have any questions.