If you’ve ever felt like Google Ads is a pay-to-play game where only the biggest budget wins, you are mostly right, but here is a secret: Google ALSO cares about user experience. In fact, Google’s 10 point company philosophy starts with: Focus on the user and all else will follow. At Simple Search, we are pragmatic. In many cases, a strong budget is critical to see results, but we are always working in the background to pull levers to optimize the more mysterious elements of the platforms to save $$.
Let’s demystify, shall we? What IS Quality Score?
Quality Score is Google’s diagnostic tool, rated on a scale from 1 to 10, that measures how relevant and useful your ad and landing page are to someone searching for a specific keyword. A high Quality Score acts as a multiplier for your campaign efficiency, earning you better ad placements at a lower CPC.
The 3 core pillars of Google Ads QS (aka the Holy Trinity)
Google calculates Quality Score using three primary sub-metrics below, each rated as Below Average, Average, or Above Average. Clearly, we all want Above Average across the board, but it ain’t that easy!
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
- Expected CTR
1. Ad Relevance measures how closely your ad copy matches the intent behind a user’s search query. If someone searches for “organic dog diapers,” but your ad headline simply says “Discount Dog Clothing,” Google considers that a weak match. What influences it: Keyword alignment between user search terms and your ad text (headlines and descriptions).
2. Landing Page Experience – Google doesn’t stop evaluating at the click. Once a user arrives on your website, Google measures whether the page delivers on the promise made in the ad.
What influences it: Message Match, Page Load Speed & Technical Health, Mobile Responsiveness, Transparency & Trust.
3. Expected Click-Through Rate (eCTR) neasures the likelihood that a user will click on your ad when it’s shown for a particular keyword. Rather than looking solely at your historical performance, Google predicts future performance by factoring in how your ad has historically performed compared to competitors targeting the same keyword. What influences it: Not very straightforward, right? see below
So, the ad relevance and LP experience are pretty self explanatory. There must be alignment between your target keywords, your ad copy, and your landing page, but what even IS expected CTR?
Expected Click-Through Rate (eCTR) is Google’s real-time prediction system
Like a genie, Google can figure out how likely a user is to click your ad when they search for a keyword. Instead of just looking at your actual historical clicks, Google runs a probability forecast every time an auction happens, essentially asking: “If every competing ad was displayed in the exact same spot on the screen, whose ad would the user choose?”
The Key Secret: It Ignores Ad Position: Standard Click-Through Rate (CTR) is biased. An ad in position #1 at the top of the page always gets more clicks than an ad at the bottom, simply because people see it first. To make eCTR a fair measure of ad quality, Google strips out position advantage. If your ad sits in position #4 and gets clicked 3% of the time, but the average position #4 ad only gets clicked 1% of the time, Google rates your eCTR as Above Average because you beat the odds for that position.
How Google Calculates the Prediction: Google’s machine learning models evaluate a combination of factors to predict user behavior including search intent, ad appeal (hard with limited characters), device type, location, time of day, etc. and domain reputation. So, it’s basically EVERYTHING, but also the hardest to pin down. The takeaway here is to do as much as you can with ad relevance, landing page relevance, site speed and mobile usability and say a prayer that your domain doesn’t have a bad history 🙂
TLDR: How to Boost Your Quality Score Today
- Refine Ad Group Architecture: Move away from generic ad groups containing dozens of loosely related keywords. Keep ad groups focused on 3 to 5 closely related keywords so your ad copy can be hyper-targeted.
- Add Negative Keywords: Add negative keywords regularly to block irrelevant searches. Preventing unqualified impressions boosts your click-through rate automatically.
- Enhance Your Ads with Assets (formerly Extensions): Use sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, and image assets. Complete ad assets improve ad real estate and raise expected CTR.
- Audit Your Mobile Landing Pages: Test load times using site speed diagnostics. If a landing page takes a long time to load on mobile, users bounce and your Quality Score drops.
- A/B Test Ad Copy Continuously: Test different messaging approaches against each other. Identify high-converting headlines and replicate their structure across other ad groups.
What did I miss? If you’d like to talk more about how we can help your campaigns run as smoothly as possible, reach out!