Quality Score is a crucial concept in Google Ads, but it can sometimes feel shrouded in mystery. This post aims to shed light on what Quality Score is, how it impacts your campaigns, and most importantly, what you can do to improve it. We’ll draw on established principles and publicly available information to empower you to optimize your ads and landing pages for better performance. Let’s dive in!
This post explores the concept of Quality Score in online advertising, drawing on insights from publicly available resources.
While it references a 2008 presentation, the focus here is on core concepts that continue to hold weight today. Google employs a multifaceted approach to assess ad quality, and understanding these principles can be highly beneficial.
It is interesting to note here that the Quality Score we see in the Google Ads interface is a single metric on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) that reflects Google’s assessment of how relevant your ad and its landing page are to a particular keyword and search query. However, a lot of detailed processes are lined up internally to evaluate the ads.
The factors that impact QS1 are as mentioned in the below slide. It is close to what advertisers have been delivering over the years.
It appears that what the advertiser typically knows of Quality Score is covered in QS1. However there is QS2 that impacts the ad rank and the factors that influence it are as shown in the below slide:
Correlation between Quality Score and Actual CPC, as shared in the document, but it’s important to remember:
- The exact impact of Quality Score on CPC can vary depending on various factors.
- A high Quality Score doesn’t guarantee the lowest CPC, but it’s a significant factor that can influence it positively.
While the specifics of how Google Ads calculates Quality Score (namely QS2, as per the document) are not fully revealed, there are several factors you, as an advertiser, can directly influence to potentially improve your score.
- Keyword Relevance: How well your keyword matches the ad group theme and user search intent.
- Ad Relevance: How well your ad text aligns with the keyword and highlights its value proposition for the search query.
- Landing Page Experience: Whether your landing page is relevant to the ad and keyword, provides a good user experience, and encourages conversions.
- Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR): Google’s prediction of how likely users are to click on your ad for a given search query.
- Historical Account Performance: Google might consider your overall account health and past performance when evaluating Quality Score.
Understanding these factors and optimizing your ads and landing pages can lead to a higher Quality Score, potentially lowering your cost-per-click (CPC) and improving your ad rank.
Once again this is an informative post based on insights picked from Google document. It’s important to remember that Google Ads is constantly evolving, and practices might change over time. While some insights may be inspired by past resources, the focus here is on providing a general understanding of Quality Score.
How this post intends to help is by giving access to the Google has made available for public use.
Refer to this tweet for more details https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1718830641016414657 and access the document here https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-10/417378.pdf
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