Quality score is a metric in Google AdWords, Bing Ads and other platforms that combine historical performance and relevance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages to a user’s search query.
Quality Score (QS) can also be a helpful warning signal when there are particular ad groups or campaigns in a PPC account that need to be optimized; as a rule of thumb, the better your Quality Score, the better your ads perform. Quality Score is graded on a 1 through 10 ranking scale, with 10 being the best.
Quality Score is comprised of several things, such as the expected click-through rate, Ad relevance, and landing page experience. Whenever your ad competes in an auction, Google evaluates these factors. Your Quality Score is then combined with your maximum cost-per-click bid to determine your Ad Rank. Ad Rank determines where/when an ad appears in the search results.
To improve ad position for a given keyword, advertisers are presented with two options: increase the maximum cost-per-click bid, or improve the Quality Score of the keyword.
In Google AdWords, Quality Scores for each keyword can easily be viewed. After logging into an account and navigating to the keywords tab, hover over the white speech bubble in the status column of your keyword.
What are the factors that go into Quality Score?
While the exact formula for calculating Quality Score for AdWords in unknown, we do know the main factors that are taken into consideration:
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Historical click through rate (CTR): This is based on historical clicks and impressions built up over time. If people who see an ad click it at a high rate, that indicates to Google that the ad fulfills a searcher’s need.
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Landing page quality: The landing page associated with each ad and keyword should be relevant to the search query, useful, and user-friendly.
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Keyword relevance: The ad should match the user’s search intent. When the keywords you bid on closely relate to the ad triggered, there is a better chance they will relate to the user’s search query.
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Geographic performance: How well the ad performs in the geographical targeted region.
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Targeted devices: How well the ad performs on different devices, such as laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Understanding these factors can help advertisers improve quality score over time.
Source: Portent
