Google Ads Quality Score Explained: How to Improve Yours in 2027

Quality Score is the number Google Ads gives each keyword to show how your ads and landing pages compare with other advertisers on the same searches.

Once you know what feeds it, it’s among the most useful diagnostics in your account, because it points straight at the keyword, ad or landing page to improve next.

I build and manage Google Ads accounts for Australian service businesses, and this is how I read and lift Quality Score in 2027.

What Quality Score measures

Google Ads Help’s page on Quality Score (2026) describes it as a diagnostic tool and says it’s measured on a scale from 1 to 10 and is available at the keyword level.

It combines 3 components, and each gets a status of Above average, Average or Below average:

• Expected click-through rate. How likely your ad is to be clicked when it shows.
• Ad relevance. How closely your ad matches the intent behind the search.
• Landing page experience. How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.

The same Google Ads Help page (2026) explains that each status compares you with advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.

It also notes that Quality Score is based on historical impressions for exact searches of your keyword.

How Quality Score connects to what you pay

Google states that Quality Score itself isn’t an input in the ad auction.

The auction uses Ad Rank, and Google Ads Help’s page on Ad Rank (2026) lists 6 factors behind it, including your bid, the quality of your ads and landing page, and the expected impact of your ad assets.

Quality Score is your view of that ad and landing page quality, so lifting its 3 components improves the same things the auction rewards.

The Ad Rank page also notes that higher-quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs.

How I lift each of the 3 components

Expected click-through rate

Expected CTR looks at how likely people are to click your ad compared with other advertisers on the same keyword.

Ads that echo the search and give a clear reason to choose you earn more clicks.

What I do:

• Write headlines that include the exact keyword the person typed.
• Add something specific and true about the business, such as a service area or turnaround (“Same-day Adelaide callouts”, “Fixed by 5pm”).
• Give each responsive search ad a full set of headlines and descriptions, so Google has plenty to test. Google Ads Help’s page on responsive search ads (2026) says you can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions for a single responsive search ad.
• Pin only the headlines that need a fixed spot. On the accounts I build, 3 headlines are pinned to position 1 (the exact keyword, the keyword with the city, and the trade with the city), and the rest are free for Google to combine.
• Switch on every asset that suits the business, including sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call, location, price and image assets.

Ad relevance

Ad relevance measures how closely your ad matches the intent behind the search.

Tightly themed ad groups make this straightforward, because every keyword in the group can share the same headline.

What I do:

• Build each ad group around a single keyword or a single tight theme. My Search campaigns use single keyword ad groups, so each ad is written for 1 search.
• Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion only where the inserted keyword still reads naturally.
• Test a different angle in each ad, such as price, speed and trust.

Landing page experience

Landing page experience looks at how relevant and useful your page is to the person who clicked.

Google Ads Help’s guide to optimising your ads and landing pages (2026) recommends matching the page to your ad and keywords, providing useful and original content, keeping the page mobile-friendly and quick, and making it easy for people to take the action you want.

What I do:

• Send each ad to a page that uses the keyword in its main heading and opening paragraph.
• Build 1 landing page for every service I advertise, so the click lands on the exact service the person searched for.
• Aim for the targets in Google Search Central’s Core Web Vitals guide (2025): LCP within the first 2.5 seconds, an INP of less than 200 milliseconds and a CLS score of less than 0.1.
• Put what the searcher wanted, your phone number and an enquiry form on screen as soon as the page loads.

My website builds lay out every service page the way my Google Ads landing pages are laid out, so every page is ready for paid traffic.

Negative keywords keep your budget on the right searches

Because Quality Score is based on exact searches of your keyword, negative keywords work on a different part of the account.

They keep your ads to the searches that match what you sell, so your budget, clicks and conversion data all come from people looking for your service.

A starting negative keyword list

On the accounts I manage, I keep an account-level negative list plus a second list built for the client’s industry.

These are common starting points, added at account level as negative broad match:

• free, cheap, DIY, do it yourself, how to, tutorial
• job, jobs, career, hiring, salary, wage, resume, CV
• training, course, school, TAFE, student, apprentice
• reviews, complaints, scam, unless reviews are part of what you offer
• Competitor brand names, unless you’re deliberately running a competitor campaign
• Locations outside your service area

Before I add a negative, I check it against the live keywords, so it only blocks the searches it’s meant to.

Negatives from your search terms report

The search terms report shows the actual searches that triggered your ads.

Pull it at least once a fortnight, sort it by cost, and add anything unrelated as a negative at the campaign or ad group level.

It’s a quick, regular task, and each negative you add keeps future budget on searches that can turn into enquiries.

Where to focus your Quality Score work

• Start with the keywords that spend. Work on the keywords carrying real spend and the lowest scores before you look at the account average.
• Judge keywords on enquiries as well. A keyword with a modest Quality Score that brings in enquiries at a cost you’re happy with is worth keeping and improving.
• Write for people first. Natural ad copy that earns clicks does more for expected CTR than headlines packed with keywords.

How long a Quality Score change takes to show

Quality Score is built from historical impressions, so a change shows up as new impressions and clicks come in, and keywords with more traffic move sooner.

Google’s Quality Score page explains that you can see daily scores by segmenting the keywords table by day, which makes it easy to watch the trend after each change.

For more on timelines, read how long before Google Ads start working, and for the auction itself, I’ve written a full explainer on how Google Ads work in 2027.

To see what a lower cost per click could mean for your business, run your numbers through my Google Ads calculator, and read my Google Ads cost guide for the budget side.

Want me to look at your Quality Scores?

My free Google Ads account review is done in writing.

Send me your Customer ID and I’ll write up what I’d change in your account, in the order that pays back first.

If you’d like to talk it through, book a free strategy call or ring me on 0403 454 199.

For ongoing work, my Google Ads management is $800+GST a month, with your ad spend paid to Google directly, no setup fees and no lock-in contract.