Quality Score
Quality Score is Google's 1 to 10 rating of how relevant your keyword, your ad and your landing page are to what someone actually typed.
It's made of 3 parts: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
Google shows it per keyword, and each part is rated below average, average or above average.
A higher score lowers what you pay for the same ad position, because Google discounts clicks on ads it expects people to find useful.
The usual cause of a low score is a mismatch somewhere in the chain, where the keyword says one thing, the ad says another, and the page the click lands on says a third.
Sending a search for "emergency plumber Adelaide" to a general homepage is the most common version of that.
Fixing it is structural rather than clever: tighten the keyword grouping, write the ad to echo the search, and send the click to a page about that 1 thing.
What this means for you
Quality Score is the difference between paying $6 and $12 for the same click, so it's usually the cheapest lever available before anyone touches the budget.
This one sits under Google Ads management.
Related terms
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