The Google quality score measures how relevant the landing page you use in CPC advertising is to a given search query and to the keywords the ad targets, and gives it a value out of 10. Quality score has a direct effect on what each click costs you. A high Google quality score says your site offers an excellent user experience around the keyword you are advertising on, and that the landing page you serve matches the intent stated in the search. The cost per click on ads is a competitive environment, and the numbers move with the quality score.

Google uses quality score technology to set your ad rank and to give priority to the ads, content and landing pages that create value for users. Google Ads specialists work their cost per click down by building content and a user experience that fit the intent behind the search query.

Note: knowing the search intent lets you build pages with a better user experience, which pays off for both SEO and the quality score.
What is search intent?

What Feeds the Google Quality Score?

  • The click-through rate (CTR) of each ad
  • How semantically solid and relevant the ad landing page is
  • How relevant the keyword is to the ad group
  • The performance history of your ad account

Quality Score Bands and What They Mean

To hold a good quality score you first need a keyword that is actually relevant to your ad. Once you have researched the keywords that will bring you customers and settled on one, you can tell after a while whether your score is any good. Working on your brand keywords, a good value usually sits between 8 and 10. On commercial keywords we want to see something between 7 and 9. Get the audience right and build quality, distinctive ads, and you can pull a better score.

Quality score in the Google Ads panel

How do you see your quality score? In the campaigns view, hover over the point where the “status” column meets the keyword and the quality score appears.

How Do I Raise My Google Quality Score?

On the Sunshine Holiday Resort campaign, our agency raised the quality score by optimizing the ads. Our advice is that understanding your audience properly matters a great deal. If your company has a physical location serving 1 city, you need to stay inside that city, pick the right keywords and keep the user experience as high as it goes.

Ask yourself this: once users land on your site from that keyword, how likely are they to carry on searching?

And What Does Google Say About It?

  1. Review the components of your quality score
  2. Make the ads more relevant to the keywords
  3. Try to raise your click-through rate (CTR)
  4. Consider updating your landing page
  5. Use the quality score alongside your other metrics

You can go to the relevant page here to see what Google Ads recommends on this.

A Little Philosophy on Raising the Quality Score

The quality score can be hard to make sense of sometimes. But; I remember doing my research in English language forums about these values when Google first switched the quality score on in the Google Ads panel. Everyone was confused in those early days, and Google was not especially keen to explain the score. It seemed to want to keep it a hidden secret, the way it does with SEO.

I remember having this conversation back then at Gezinet in Kadıköy. Your position in the organic results is connected to the quality score. The further ahead we came in SEO, the higher the quality score came back. That was around 2010, and it would change before long.

Then it changed.

Google had let out the secret sauce. It set out the basic components of the quality score; there was not much direct connection to SEO. There were plenty of factors that crossed over indirectly, though. They were the fundamentals of SEO: search intent and user experience. The people who understand this subject are usually the ones who know SEO.

Now, as both an SEO specialist and a Google Ads specialist, here are the things I would strongly recommend you watch.

  • Page speed

This is not one to skip. Sometimes companies come to us and say they want to advertise. I go and look at the site and there is a heavy video on the entrance and page speeds that are unbelievably low. It is close to certain that this will hurt your ad performance.

  • E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness)

You are running ads, but there is no address on the site, no phone number and no company behind it. I think that is untrustworthy for the user and untrustworthy for Google. For SEO, for Google Ads and for the whole world, I would recommend taking E-A-T seriously.

  • Bounce rate

Ah, the people who do not know what they want. Do you think pogo sticking only damages SEO? Of course not. It is a dramatic problem for Google Ads too. If the user lands on your site from the search term, goes back, and connects to the next site along, it can affect your quality score. Look carefully at whether you have built a user experience that actually fits the search intent.

  • Engagement

Does the user arriving on that keyword engage with your site at all? To work that out you need to properly understand what engagement rate means. We covered it in detail, and I would recommend reading it and making the changes it calls for on your site.

What is engagement rate in Google Analytics 4?

Those are the ones that came to mind, and they are the most important. There is more to work on, of course. At bottom, improving the things I described here can produce gains of up to 90% in your quality score.

Türk SEM is a Google Partner. You can run your Google Ads campaigns through our agency.