A platform-specific estimate of the relevance and quality of an advertisement, its keywords, and its destination experience.
A diagnostic signal used by some advertising platforms to guide campaign quality and efficiency.
Short and sweet:
A platform-specific estimate of the relevance and quality of an advertisement, its keywords, and its destination experience.
A diagnostic signal used by some advertising platforms to guide campaign quality and efficiency.
See also: Paid Search, Cost Per Click, Landing Page
Quality score is a rating search platforms like Google Ads assign to a keyword based on factors like expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience, and it directly affects both how much an advertiser pays per click and how often their ad is shown. A high score can lower the effective cost of a click and improve placement, while a low score can price an advertiser out of an auction even if their maximum bid is technically competitive. Because it rewards relevance rather than just budget size, small advertisers with tightly targeted, well-matched ads can sometimes outcompete larger budgets that are less precisely aligned to the keyword.
Google Ads assigns every keyword a Quality Score from 1 to 10, and an advertiser with a high score for “emergency plumber” can actually pay less per click than a competitor bidding the same amount with a lower score.
A landing page that loads slowly or doesn’t match the ad’s promise will drag this rating down, which is why marketers obsess over landing page relevance almost as much as the ad copy itself.
Improving this score by even a couple of points can meaningfully lower advertising costs for a business like an online furniture store, since Google effectively rewards more relevant, higher-quality ads with cheaper placement.
