Understanding Quality Score and Its Relationship to Keyword Relevance

Understanding Quality Score

Quality Score is a diagnostic metric that Google assigns to each keyword in your Google Ads campaigns, measured on a scale from 1 to 10. This score serves as an estimate of how well your ads, landing pages, and keywords compare in quality and relevance to other advertisers' ads shown for the same keyword. Essentially, it's a grading system that reflects how relevant and useful Google believes your ad and landing page are to someone searching for your keyword.

How Quality Score Impacts Your Campaigns

Quality Score directly influences two critical aspects of your advertising performance: your cost per click (CPC) and your ad rank. The relationship is straightforward—higher Quality Scores result in lower costs per click, meaning you pay less for each click on your ads. Additionally, Quality Score is used in the ad rank calculation, which determines your ad's position in search results. Google calculates Ad Rank using the formula: Ad Rank = Max. CPC × Quality Score. If your Quality Score is too low, Google may not show your ads at all, making it a critical factor in campaign eligibility.

The Three Components of Quality Score

Quality Score is calculated based on three main components, each evaluated as "Above average," "Average," or "Below average" when compared to competitors' performance over the past 90 days:

Expected Clickthrough Rate (CTR) measures the likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown. This is based on historical performance data and predicts how often users will click your ad relative to how often it appears.

Ad Relevance gauges how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user's search query. This component evaluates whether your ad messaging aligns with what users are actually searching for.

Landing Page Experience assesses how relevant and user-friendly your landing page is after someone clicks your ad. This includes factors like page quality, relevance to the search query, and overall user experience.

The Critical Relationship Between Quality Score and Keyword Relevance

Keyword relevance is fundamentally intertwined with Quality Score, serving as a cornerstone of campaign success. The relationship works through multiple interconnected factors:

Keyword-to-Ad Alignment is essential—your chosen keywords must be closely aligned with your ad copy and landing page content. When you select keywords that directly relate to your products or services and craft ad messaging that echoes the language and intent of user searches, you significantly boost your Quality Score. For example, if you're promoting running shoes, using keywords like "best running shoes" or "top athletic footwear" will generate better Quality Scores than generic terms like "shoes".

Search Intent Matching requires that your keywords accurately reflect what users are searching for. When your keywords match user search intent, your ads are more likely to be clicked, which improves your expected CTR component and overall Quality Score.

Negative Keywords and Refinement play an important role in maintaining keyword relevance. By regularly refining your keyword list and adding negative keywords to eliminate unqualified traffic, you improve the overall relevance of your campaign and prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches.

Optimizing for Better Quality Scores

To improve your Quality Score through better keyword relevance, focus on these strategies:

Ensure your keywords are tightly associated with your ad group's theme and that your ad copy directly relates to user search queries. Review your Quality Score components within the Google Ads interface to identify keywords with low relevance ratings, then either refine your keyword selection or modify your ad copy to better match those keywords. Additionally, evaluate how the system views the relevance of your keywords to your ad copy and user searches by checking the "Above average," "Average," or "Below average" ratings for each component.

By maintaining strong keyword relevance across all three Quality Score components, you create a virtuous cycle: better relevance leads to higher Quality Scores, which results in lower costs per click and better ad placements, ultimately making your campaigns more cost-effective and successful.