Quality Score

Quality Score is Google’s 1-10 rating of your ads, keywords, and landing pages that directly affects how much you pay per click and where your ads appear. Higher scores mean lower costs and better ad positions.

Three factors determine Quality Score: expected click-through rate (how likely users are to click), ad relevance (how closely your ad matches search intent), and landing page experience (how useful and relevant your landing page is). For expensive industries like legal services where CPCs can exceed $100, even small Quality Score improvements can significantly reduce costs.

The Quality Score is calculated at the keyword level, and improving it requires optimization across your ad copy, keyword organization, and landing pages working together.

Example: A personal injury lawyer with a Quality Score of 5 pays premium rates per click. After improving ad relevance by tightly matching keywords to ad groups and creating dedicated landing pages, Quality Score increases to 8, reducing CPC while maintaining the same ad position.