Google Ads Quality Score: what it does to your CTR and your CPC
Updated June 15, 2026
Quality Score is a 1–10 diagnostic that summarizes three ratings — expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience — each marked Above average, Average, or Below average. Google says the score itself "is not an input in the ad auction"; what moves cost is ad quality feeding Ad Rank, and "higher quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs." So the score is a mirror, not the mechanism. Fix the component that's actually Below average — usually expected CTR or a landing page that doesn't match the keyword's query — rather than the number.
A real audit: a database company's keywords, scored
When Adjar pulled a Quality Score for every keyword that served in one B2B search account this month — the same
account behind the match-type tuning log — the ratings read the same way
nearly all the way down: expected CTR Below average, ad relevance Above average, landing page experience
Below average. The worst keyword, [data masking tool], scored 2 out of 10 while sending data-masking
searches to a generic access-control page. The most expensive, [cloudbeaver], scored 3 and had spent $357.41 for
zero conversions. Quality Score is the column most advertisers glance at and few read; read properly, it names
which keywords overpay and why.
What Quality Score measures
Google's Quality Score is "a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers," scored 1–10. It summarizes three component ratings, each marked "Above average," "Average," or "Below average":
- Expected CTR — "the likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown."
- Ad relevance — "how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user's search."
- Landing page experience — "how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad."
The digit is just those three folded together: a 2 means at least two are Below average.
The score doesn't set your CPC — ad quality does
The usual claim is that a low Quality Score raises your cost per click. Google is blunt that the 1–10 number itself isn't the lever: "Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction. It's a diagnostic tool." What actually moves cost is Ad Rank, which is built partly on "the quality of your ads and landing page" — the very signals Quality Score reports. Higher quality buys both position and price: "Higher quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs."
So the score is a mirror, not the mechanism. A Below-average rating doesn't cause a high CPC; it reports the weak ad-quality signal that already did.
Why a 12% CTR keyword still rated "Below"
Expected CTR is the rating people misread first. [cloudbeaver] clicked at 12.23% — a strong rate — and Google
still rated its expected CTR Below average. Expected CTR is a forward prediction, normalized for ad position and
judged against the competitors bidding on the same term. The rating is not the number already in your report.
Read landing page experience against the actual page
Landing page experience is the most fixable rating, because you can see exactly what Google is judging. List the
destination page next to each keyword and a Below rating reads against a real URL. In this account the data masking
keywords all landed on /database-access-control/ — the catch-all product page, not a masking page. That gap, query
asking one thing and page answering another, is what "Below average" means here.
The fix is alignment: send the keyword to a page that answers its query, or drop it if no such page exists. Landing page experience is the one Quality Score input you fix by editing a page.
What to do about a low Quality Score
- Sort by Quality Score worst-first, with spend beside it. A QS-2 keyword carrying $9 can wait; a QS-3 keyword carrying $357 is the one bleeding.
- Fix the rating that's actually Below. Above-average ad relevance needs nothing, so work spent there is wasted. Most accounts bleed on expected CTR and landing page experience.
- Match the page to the query. A keyword's landing page should answer that specific search, not the product category that contains it.
- Keep ad groups single-themed. One theme per ad group keeps the ad text close to the keyword, which holds ad relevance Above.
- Drop QS-1 keywords you can't align. A keyword whose query you have no relevant page for is a structural loss, not a tuning problem.
How the audit actually ran
The account runs on Adjar: keywords live in config, and the monthly report pulls each keyword's Quality Score and three ratings from the Google Ads API, rendered worst-first with the landing page and spend beside it.
data masking tool exact QS 2 CTR Below · Rel Avg · LP Below /database-access-control/ $9.86
cloudbeaver exact QS 3 CTR Below · Rel Above · LP Below /compare/bytebase-vs-cloudbeaver/ $357.41
liquibase exact QS 5 CTR Below · Rel Above · LP Avg /compare/bytebase-vs-liquibase/ $247.11
Two keywords bottomed out at Quality Score 1. Neither had a page that answered its query, so both became removals — a diff, not a console hunt:
-[[campaigns.ad_groups.keywords]]
-text = "jit access"
-match = "EXACT"
The next report regenerates the column from live data, so a keyword sliding to Below average surfaces on the next run, not the next time someone opens the keyword view.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a good Quality Score in Google Ads?
Quality Score runs 1–10, but the number matters less than its three component ratings. A keyword sitting at Above average on all three will typically score 7–10; one with two Below-average ratings lands around 2–4. Read the components, not just the digit: a 5 with a fixable Below-average landing page is a better position than a 5 that's Below on everything.
- Does Quality Score affect my cost per click?
Not directly. Google states the 1–10 Quality Score "is not an input in the ad auction" — it's a diagnostic. What affects your CPC is Ad Rank, which is built partly on the quality of your ads and landing page. Those are the same signals Quality Score reports, so a low score reliably points at the weak signal that is raising your cost, even though the score itself isn't the lever.
- How do I improve my Quality Score?
Fix the component rated Below average. For landing page experience, point the keyword at a page that answers its specific query instead of a general product page. For expected CTR, write ad copy that earns the click and remove keywords whose searchers want something you don't sell. For ad relevance, tighten ad groups to one theme so the ad text stays close to the keyword.
- Why is my expected CTR "below average" when my actual CTR looks fine?
Expected CTR is not your historical click rate. It's Google's forward prediction of how your ad will perform in a given position, judged against competitors on the same term. A keyword can click at 12% and still be rated Below average because Google expects more for that slot. Don't read the rating as the CTR already in your table.
- What is landing page experience and how do I fix a "Below average" rating?
Landing page experience is Google's rating of how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad. A Below-average rating usually means the page answers a broader topic than the query — a "data masking" keyword pointed at a general access-control page, say. Fix it by sending the keyword to a page that matches its query, or by dropping the keyword if no such page exists.