Google Ads Quality Score: How to Raise It

Google Ads Quality Score is the most misread column in the account. Business owners see a 4 next to a keyword they care about and assume they are being penalised. Agencies quote an average Quality Score in monthly reports as though it were revenue. Both readings are wrong, and both lead to work that changes the number without changing the results.

Google’s own documentation is unusually blunt about this. It states that Google Ads Quality Score is not a key performance indicator, should not be optimised, and is not an input in the ad auction. What does affect your costs is auction-time quality, a separate assessment made in real time. The score in your account only summarises that assessment. It is useful for pointing at a problem and useless as a target.

So the practical question is not “how do I get a 10?” It is “which component is below average, is it actually costing me enquiries, and is the fix worth the week it will take?” That is the order this guide follows. The video below is Google’s own explanation of how ad quality and Ad Rank relate, which is worth watching before you touch anything in the account.

PART 1 · DIAGNOSE

What Quality Score Measures, and What It Does Not

IN BRIEFGoogle Ads Quality Score is a 1-to-10 diagnostic at keyword level, built from three components and benchmarked against advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the past 90 days. It is not the auction input, and it has no ad group or account version, a distinction that changes how a paid search account should be managed.

Google calculates Google Ads Quality Score from three things, each reported as “Above average”, “Average” or “Below average” rather than as a number:

• Expected clickthrough rate. How likely your ad is to be clicked when it shows. Google normalises this for position, so bidding higher does not improve it.
• Ad relevance. How closely your ad copy matches the intent behind the search, not merely whether it repeats the keyword.
• Landing page experience. How relevant and useful the page is to someone who clicked, content, navigation, mobile behaviour and loading speed all feed into it.

Two details catch people out. A dash instead of a score means there were not enough exact-match searches to judge, not that something is broken. And because the score rests on historical impressions for exact searches, changing a keyword’s match type does not move it, a point worth reading alongside how match types actually control which searches you pay for.

The reason this matters commercially is simple. Ad quality feeds Ad Rank, and Ad Rank decides whether your ad shows at all, where it shows, and what you pay per click. Google states that higher quality ads can lead to lower costs per click. The score is the readout; the underlying quality is the asset. IZI’s consulting-first approach starts by separating the two.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 1 OF 4

What Google Says Does and Does Not Affect Ad Quality

IN BRIEFGoogle publishes a short list of what genuinely moves ad quality and what does not. Three of the most common Google Ads Quality Score fixes sold in Malaysia appear on the “does not matter” side: restructuring the account, switching off search partners, and bidding for a higher position. Worth checking before you repeat the setup work you already did.

PART 2 · DIAGNOSE

Which Component Is Actually Costing You Money

IN BRIEFA low score on a keyword nobody searches costs you nothing. Before fixing anything, sort keywords by spend, then look at the component statuses on the top spenders only. That single filter usually cuts the repair list from forty keywords to four.

Add four columns to the keyword view, Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Exp., then sort by cost, highest first. You are looking for one pattern: real money going to keywords with a “Below average” flag. Everything else can wait.

This is where most accounts get the priority backwards. A cluster of 3-out-of-10 keywords spending RM 40 a month between them attracts attention because the numbers look alarming. Meanwhile the keyword taking a third of the budget sits at 6 with a below-average landing page, quietly paying a premium on every click.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 2 OF 4

Where the Repair Effort Goes When Scores Are Low

IN BRIEFMost of the work that genuinely raises Quality Score is writing and page work, not account admin. Copy that matches the search and a page that delivers on it account for the bulk of the effort, which is why a search team worth paying for spends more time on words than on settings.

PART 3 · DESIGN

How to Raise Ad Relevance and Expected CTR

IN BRIEFBoth components respond to the same discipline: fewer keywords per ad group, and ad text that repeats the searcher’s language rather than your brand’s. Google’s own advice is to split ad groups holding keywords one ad cannot address, and to make the offer specific enough to be clicked deliberately.

Work through it in this order. Each step is cheap on its own; the sequence is what makes it work.

1. Pull the search terms report first. You are looking for the phrases people actually typed, in their words. Ad relevance is judged against intent, so guessing at the wording is the expensive option.
2. Split any ad group one ad cannot honestly serve. If an ad group covers repairs, installation and pricing enquiries, no single headline speaks to all three. Group keywords by theme and give each theme its own ad.
3. Put the searcher’s phrase in the headline. Not the brand name, not a slogan. The cheapest relevance win available anywhere in the account.
4. Make the offer specific. Google notes that a more specific ad can lower clickthrough rate while raising conversion rate, usually the trade you want, since you pay per click either way.
5. Use a call to action that matches the page. “Get a quote” leading to a quote form is coherent. “Get a quote” leading to a homepage is the mismatch that drags two components down at once.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 3 OF 4

How Long a Fix Takes to Show in the Column

IN BRIEFQuality Score is benchmarked on the last 90 days of exact-match search history, so a good change takes weeks to surface. Judging a rewrite after four days tells you nothing, and reverting it because “the score dropped” is how accounts end up worse than they started.

PART 4 · DEPLOY

Fixing the Landing Page Half of the Score

IN BRIEFLanding page experience is the component most advertisers cannot fix from inside Google Ads, which is why it stays below average longest. Google’s guidance is about follow-through, mobile ease and loading speed, the same ground covered by a proper page-level audit.

Google is explicit that the exact search phrase does not need to appear on the page. What matters is that the page delivers what the searcher wanted. Four practical checks cover most of it:

• The page continues the ad’s promise. If the ad offers same-day aircon servicing, that offer is visible without scrolling, not buried under a company history.
• Mobile navigation is genuinely easy. Google names the device as a factor in ad quality, and most Malaysian search traffic arrives on a phone.
• The page loads quickly. Google puts loading speed directly in its landing page advice; a slow page loses the visitor before the offer is read.
• Conversion rate is used as a proxy. It does not feed the status, but Google suggests it as a practical way to tell whether the page is working.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 4 OF 4

Reading the Three Component Statuses Together

IN BRIEFThe three statuses are more useful as a pattern than one at a time. Which combination you are looking at usually names the cause, and, more helpfully, names the work you can safely skip.

PART 5 · DRIVE

When to Stop Chasing the Score

IN BRIEFStop when all three components read “Average” or better on your top-spending keywords and cost per enquiry is stable. Beyond that point Google Ads Quality Score is decoration, and the next ringgit belongs in the offer, the page, or the wider paid search plan.

There is a real cost to chasing a 10. Every rewrite resets the history the components are measured against, so an account tuned monthly never accumulates the steady record that produces a confident reading. Restraint is a legitimate optimisation.

The measure that matters is cost per enquiry, and the reason quality work is worth doing at all is that Google states higher quality ads can lead to lower costs per click. If your cost per enquiry is falling while your Quality Score sits at 7, the work succeeded. If your score climbed to 9 and the phone stopped ringing, it did not.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Google Ads Quality Score FAQ

1. What is a good Google Ads Quality Score?

Anything from 7 upwards is comfortable, and 5 or 6 is workable if all three components read “Average”. That said, the target should be component statuses rather than the number. Google describes Google Ads Quality Score as a diagnostic tool rather than a score to optimise, so a keyword at 6 with no below-average flags needs no work.

2. Does a higher Quality Score lower my cost per click?

Indirectly, yes. The score itself is not an auction input, but the auction-time quality it summarises is, and Google states that higher quality ads can lead to lower costs per click. So improving genuine ad and page quality tends to reduce CPC. Pushing the reported number without improving the underlying experience does not.

3. Why does my keyword show a dash instead of a Quality Score?

It means there have not been enough searches exactly matching that keyword for Google to form a judgement. Nothing is wrong. Low-volume or very long keyword phrases sit like this for months, and the fix is patience or a broader phrase, not an account change.

4. Will restructuring my campaigns raise Quality Score?

Not by itself. Google is direct on this point. Moving keywords into new ad groups or campaigns without changing the ad text or landing page has no effect on quality, and there is no ad group, campaign or account-level Google Ads Quality Score. Restructuring only helps when it lets you write a tighter ad for a tighter set of keywords.

5. How long before a fix shows up in the score?

Expect thirty days before component statuses move and ninety before the picture is fully refreshed, because the score compares your recent history against other advertisers over a 90-day window. The common mistake is changing something else at day ten, which makes both changes impossible to judge.