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Quality Score

glossary google ads updated 2026.04.29 5 min read
// contents · 8 sections
  1. What Quality Score measures
  2. How Quality Score is calculated
  3. Quality Score in 2025/26
  4. Common misconceptions
  5. Does a 10/10 Quality Score guarantee top position?
  6. Should you pause keywords with QS below 5?
  7. Related concepts
  8. Sources

Quality Score is a 1-10 keyword-level diagnostic Google Ads exposes to advertisers, summarising three sub-scores. It is not an input to the live ad auction.

What Quality Score measures

Quality Score is a per-keyword estimate of how relevant your ad and landing page are versus other advertisers competing for the same query. Google publishes it on a 1-10 scale (Google Ads Help, 2026-02-15) inside the keywords table, alongside three component statuses: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. Each component is rated Above average, Average, or Below average. The composite number changes only after enough impression history accrues for the exact-match version of the keyword; new or low-volume keywords show a null score until that history exists. Because it is a diagnostic, the metric exists to surface improvement opportunities, not to forecast cost or position directly.

How Quality Score is calculated

Quality Score is derived from three component scores, each compared against advertisers bidding on the same keyword over the trailing impression window. Expected CTR predicts how often your ad will be clicked when shown for that keyword, holding ad position and assets constant. Ad Relevance grades how closely the ad text matches the query intent. Landing Page Experience reflects load speed, mobile fit, content match, and navigation transparency — Google added a landing-page navigation prediction model in 2024 to score how easily users find the promised content (Search Engine Land, 2024-09-19). Google does not publish weights or a closed-form formula; the three statuses are the only granular signal you get back.

Quality Score in 2025/26

In automation-heavy accounts, the visible Quality Score is best read as a hint, not a target. Google states plainly:

"Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction. It's a diagnostic tool to identify how ads that show for certain keywords affect the user experience." (Google Ads Help, 2026-02-15)

The live auction uses Ad Rank, which considers your bid, ad and landing-page quality, Ad Rank thresholds, auction context, and expected asset impact (Google Ads Help: About Ad Rank, 2025-11-04). Those quality signals overlap with QS components, but the 1-10 number itself is not consulted at query time. Optmyzr's 2026 review notes that broad-match keywords now legitimately span wider intent, so a 5/10 keyword can still drive profitable conversions when bidding strategies prioritise value over relevance (Optmyzr, 2026-03-02).

In Whitead audits we treat Quality Score as a triage signal, not a scorecard. When we see clusters of Below average Ad Relevance on broad-match keywords paired with rising CPC, the root cause is almost always match-type bleed — the keyword is firing for queries the ad copy never addresses. The fix is rarely a creative rewrite; it is tighter negative keywords and an ad-group split by intent. Conversely, Below average Landing Page Experience flagged across an account usually points at a single template (slow LCP, intrusive interstitial, post-click mismatch) rather than per-keyword problems. Either pattern is invisible if you only look at the composite 1-10 number and miss the component breakdown.

Common misconceptions

The most damaging misread is treating Quality Score as a direct CPC discount. Google has never published a CPC-discount table tied to QS values, and the auction uses the underlying components rather than the integer score. Find QS in Tools → Keywords by enabling the Quality Score columns; check trends with the historical QS columns rather than today's snapshot.

Does a 10/10 Quality Score guarantee top position?

No. Position depends on Ad Rank at query time, which combines your bid, the live quality signals, Ad Rank thresholds, auction competitiveness, search context, and expected asset impact (Google Ads Help: About Ad Rank, 2025-11-04). A 10/10 keyword still loses to a higher-bid competitor with strong assets in a competitive auction.

Should you pause keywords with QS below 5?

Not on the score alone. A practical rule from a 2026 Search Engine Land analysis: aim for ad-group-average QS of 7+, but stop chasing perfection — review every few months rather than weekly (Search Engine Land, 2026-02-04). Pause based on cost-per-conversion and incremental value, not the diagnostic.

Quality Score sits next to bidding and creative diagnostics in our glossary. See Smart Bidding for how automated strategies use the underlying quality signals, Negative Keywords for the most common QS-recovery lever, and Conversion Tracking for why outcome quality, not the visible 1-10, is the metric Smart Bidding actually optimises against.

Sources

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