The ledger
What it is
- A check-up: it helps spot whether the ads, the landing pages or the choice of keywords could do better.
- A number out of 10, shown for each keyword.
- Relative: a higher number means the ad and its page serve that keyword’s searchers better than other advertisers’ do.
- Built from past impressions on searches that exactly match the keyword.
- A rolled-up estimate of how the ads have fared in auctions overall.
What it isn’t
- Part of the auction. Ad Rank doesn’t use it.
- A target. Google warns against treating it as a performance measure to push up, or blending it into other reporting.
- Affected by switching match types, since it only looks at exact searches.
- Complete. Some things that affect ad quality, such as the device, where the searcher is, the time of day and the ad’s assets, may not show up in it.
So what does the auction use?
Quality still counts in the auction, just not this number. Ad Rank weighs quality as it stands at the moment of each auction, using signals that can include the same three components and others. Quality Score is Google’s summary of that judgement, shown in the account for the advertiser to keep an eye on.
A useful way to hold it: the auction reads the meter live, every search; Quality Score is the printout afterwards. Google describes the score as a pointer to where effort is best spent, not a number to chase.
The three components
- Expected click-through rate
- How likely the ad is to be clicked when it appears.
- Ad relevance
- How well the ad fits what the searcher is really after.
- Landing page experience
- Whether the page the ad leads to is relevant and useful to the people who click.
Each status compares the ad with other advertisers’ ads that appeared on precisely the same search in the past 90 days. Anything short of above average hints at room to improve.
When the column shows a dash instead of a number
A dash means too few exact-match searches have happened for a score to be worked out. Google offers two ways to build up the data: look in Keyword Planner for related keywords that are searched more, or loosen the match type. Loosening leaves the calculation unchanged, but the keyword enters more auctions, so exact-match data piles up faster.
A broad match keyword with no impressions can still be scored if the same keyword set to exact match, in the same ad group, has had impressions within 90 days.
Where Google points for each weak component
Google’s “5 ways to use Quality Score” takes the components one at a time (its sections 2 to 4), always from the same starting idea: give people what they came for and results tend to follow. Summarised:
| If this is average or below | Where Google points |
|---|---|
| Ad relevance | Bring the ad’s wording closer to what people type; break up ad groups whose keywords are too mixed for one ad; sort keywords into tighter themes (its example separates engagement rings from wedding rings). |
| Expected click-through rate | Make the ad more specific and true to what the keyword’s searchers want, say what sets the offer apart, and test calls to action that fit the landing page. |
| Landing page experience | Land people on the thing they searched for, carry the ad’s promise through to the page, and make the page quicker and easier to use on a phone. |
Two cautions come with it. A sharper ad may draw fewer clicks yet more conversions, so the right balance depends on the goal. And the landing page doesn’t have to echo the search word for word; it has to deliver what the person wanted.
Where to find it
- Open Keywords, under the Campaigns menu.
- Click the columns icon, top right of the table.
- In the column picker, open the Quality score group and tick the score and its three components, plus the “hist.” versions for past scores over the date range.
- Apply. To watch the scores day by day, segment the table by day.
Bay 03 covers match types, and why they leave the score alone.