The Google Ad Quality Score accessible for specific keywords in your Google Ads account is well-known to everyone; the Quality Score is viewable at the keyword level. Many people miss that there is more going on here than initially appears. Most of the time, the keyword-level QS provided to you in the Google Ads interface is insufficient to resolve a Quality Score issue.
There is more to look at, and it might take some investigation on your part to resolve the total problem. This tutorial will clarify the many sorts of Google Quality Score, explain why they’re significant, dispel common myths regarding Quality Score, and provide you with a list of steps to improve your Quality Score.
Different Quality Scores
The score for Account-Level Quality
The historical performance of all the keywords and advertising in an account determines the Google Ad Quality Score at the account level. Although Google has not confirmed the existence of this Quality Score, it is widely acknowledged that there are other layers of Quality Scores besides the public keyword-level Quality Score.
Your account’s overall Google Ad Quality Score will suffer if you have a lot of low-quality keywords and low-click-through-rate (CTR) ads with poor historical performance. It will also be more challenging to add new keywords because those new keywords will have lower Quality Scores overall.
We can also discuss Google’s preference for more established accounts over recent ones at the account-level Quality Score level.
A long-running, successful account will perform better than a brand-new one. After attempting to raise the Google Ad Quality Score, it may take months before a poorly performing account starts to improve, so starting over with a new account may be tempting. Starting anew, however, is against Google Ads policy; as a result, you must “start over” within the current account by restructuring and adhering to the rules for keyword, ad, and landing page relevance.
How to approach keywords with a low QS seems to divide opinions. Some will advise you to eliminate them as soon as it becomes clear that they won’t work effectively, while others believe you should suspend them. Both options are viable for low-quality keywords since, if you suspend or delete them, they will stop gathering data and eventually impact your account-level scoreless.
Before you decide to eliminate them, you should consider how much search volume and return those keywords have brought in for you. The system will have trouble reactivating deleted keywords since Google will consider them duplicates when you do so. To avoid risk, ensure that everything you decide to remove is something you can afford to lose.
The Score for Ad Group Quality
The Ad Group-level Quality Score can help you identify the campaign-level areas that require improvement. You can see clearly where you need to put your initial attention; for example, if you have a low keyword QS in one ad group but your overall average is a 7, as opposed to an ad group with an average of a 4. You can get a more significant ROI by initially focusing on the areas with the lowest average QS.
To improve ad group QS, you should update low CTR ads and reorganize your campaigns and ad groups. Restructuring your ad groups is an excellent strategy to strengthen your account structure. When you rearrange items, your visible history is removed, but the history used to determine your Google Ad Quality Score is retained.
The ‘Ad Groups’ tab in an account displays the keyword Google Ad Quality Score average for that particular ad group, not the ad group quality score itself.
The score for Keyword-Level Relevance
Google assigns your keywords a Quality Score, displayed in the Google Ads interface. The Google Ad Quality Score for a keyword is calculated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being poor and ten being excellent. The effectiveness of search queries that precisely match your keyword determines your keyword-level score. As a result, regardless of match type, your QS will be the same for a keyword.
It’s vital to remember that a keyword’s Google Ad Quality Score (QS) is determined by how well it has historically performed on Google.com up until the point where it receives a significant number of impressions in your account (significant is defined as a large quantity, in the multiple of thousands). The impression threshold is used to describe this.
A keyword’s QS will begin to reflect how it has performed in your account once it has received sufficient impressions, and prior performance will become less critical. This is crucial if your account has many keywords with meager impression rates because these keywords will not be assessed based on their QS in the account. Little can be done to affect a keyword’s QS before it reaches the impression threshold.
You can view the following when checking your account’s keyword QS:
The relevance of the term, advertisements, and landing page to those viewing the ad is measured by the QS.
Essential Factors of Google Ad Quality Score
- Ad Relevance: The degree to which the ad copy and keywords are connected
- Experience with the landing page: How helpful the page is to visitors
- Expected CTR: Based on prior results, the likelihood that an advertisement will be clicked when displayed
The most recent QS for the reporting period is the Google Ad Quality Score (historic).
The most recent instance of ad relevance throughout the reporting period
Landing page Experience (historic): the most recent score for the reporting period’s landing page experience.
The most recent anticipated click-through rate for the reporting period is known as the expected CTR (historic).
Ideas to increase impressions:
Analyze statistics on impression share. The percentage of available impressions for which your advertising was qualified to appear that were shown as your impression share. If your impression share is poor, raising your daily budget or boosting bids to rank higher can help you perform better.
Add broad match keywords or relax restricted match types. Running keywords in phrase and exact match alone will hurt QS by slowing impression growth and extending rap-up times. Start with the ad groups or keywords with the highest click-through rate (CTR) to roll this out carefully.
To make the keywords less specialized, loosen up the themes. To avoid being searched for, ensure your keywords are not too exact. In the Google Ads interface, the Opportunities Tab is a fantastic area to look for fresh, pertinent keywords to add to your current ad groups.
Look at CTR as a performance metric for campaigns whose keywords have garnered a lot of impressions. Less than 1.5% for both the keyword and ad CTR indicates that users do not consider the ad pertinent to their search and suggests that the ad should be more focused on the ad group subject.
Google Ad Quality Score
A factor that influences your QS is the click-through rate of the advertisements you have running in each of your ad groups. Since Google considers all of your advertising when determining your scores, if you have a lot of poor CTR ads in your ad groups, they may be contributing to a low QS. Include Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) advertising in your Search Network campaigns to naturally increase your account’s CTR.
DKI advertising will display a user’s precise search query if it doesn’t exceed the character constraints for the ad. Although using these ads requires extreme caution, your DKI ad is more likely to be clicked than a non-DKI ad since it appears more pertinent to the user’s search.
To avoid damaging your ROI, you’ll need to be attentive to check for advertisements that aren’t converting while having a high CTR. Poor-performing advertising can be stopped without harming your Google Ad Quality Score; however, changing an existing ad will erase its history.
AdWords uses a Google Ad Quality Score when deciding whether to display extensions for your advertising. First place shouldn’t always be your target for all of your advertisements because it’s frequently not the most lucrative spot, but you’ll need a competitive bid and a high-quality Score if you want to use extensions like site links to increase your click-through rate. Google has also just started experimenting with placing the domain in the ad’s first line, but an ad must be at the top of the page to be eligible.
Ranking for Landing Pages
Google frequently highlights the importance of relevant, unique information, transparency, and navigability when evaluating the quality of a landing page. The reason Google is the top search engine is that it wants to compel advertisers to create high-quality websites that Google users will find relevant and valuable. Not just Google should care about the quality of landing pages; so should advertising. Adversaries are more likely to increase ROI and convert visitors into customers when they follow the best practices for landing pages.
When you mouse over the speech bubble for a keyword’s Google Ad Quality Score, the interface will let you know if there is a problem with your landing pages. Landing page quality is a consideration in your keyword’s Quality Score, but Google doesn’t explicitly mention it (although we have seen this term in earlier Google help articles). Remember that real people continually examine your landing pages in addition to adhering to Google’s landing page requirements. There is, therefore always room for development, and outstanding usability and a quick load time are particularly crucial.
Network Quality Score Display
The Google Display Network operates somewhat differently from the Google Search Network regarding your Google Ad Quality Score. The previous performance of your ad on the website you qualify for and comparable websites will be considered by Google Ads. The quality of your landing page and the relevance of your ads and keywords to the website remain crucial.
The bidding alternatives available on the Display Network will affect the elements that go into determining your DN Quality Score. When a campaign utilizes a CPM model, the Google Ad Quality Score is determined by the landing page, but when it employs CPC bidding, previous ad CTR and landing page quality are considered.
You may raise your Display Google Ad Quality Score by experimenting with various ad formats. If a site doesn’t support single pictures, you’ll want to cover both bases in case image advertisements perform better on some websites than responsive ads. Your CTR will increase the more options you have and tests you do. Remember that the Display Network is an entirely different animal, and you should use the resources at your disposal to target your advertising to the right websites and demographics. To handle your Search Network and Display Network campaigns more effectively, we also advise doing so.
Examining your relative click-through rate is another technique to raise your GDN Google Ad Quality Score. By evaluating this indicator, you can compare how well your ads are doing with those of other advertisers on the same websites. For this metric, Google Ads offers an optional column on the Campaign and Ad Group tabs. The easy formula for calculating relative CTR is dividing the CTR of the GDN campaign by the CTR of the other ads running in the exact locations.
Your GDN Quality Score may suffer from a low relative CTR. Start by checking for potential exclusions, employing site and category exclusions, redesigning your advertising, adding negative keywords, and utilizing contextual targeting if your needs improvement.
The score for Mobile Quality
Regardless of the device platform you select (computers, iPads, smartphones, etc.), Google claims that the Google Ad Quality Score is calculated similarly for mobile ads. However, the system does take the user’s distance from the business location into account, when available, for mobile ad Quality Score by using device location and location extension data.
When determining a Quality Score, mobile devices with complete Internet browsers and computers treat ads the same way, but your ad will have a different QS for its mobile and desktop versions. You might notice an increase or decrease in your Quality Score in either campaign after the migration if you separate a combined campaign (targeted to All devices, including computers, mobile phones, and tablets) so that mobile is separate from desktop (a recommended structure from Google).
However, nothing has changed. When you divide your combined campaign into distinct campaigns, you’ll be able to see what each Google Ad Quality Score was because your combined campaign combined the Quality Scores for the many platforms.
Why Google Ad Quality Score Is Important
From Google’s perspective, the Google Ad Quality Score is significant since it reflects how relevant your ads are to people’s search searches. Google wants to maintain its position as the leading search engine, and Quality Score helps it do so by ensuring that the advertisements people see are pertinent to their search queries.
The Google Ad Quality Score is crucial from the perspective of advertisers for various reasons. This measure decides if a keyword is even allowed to participate in an auction and, consequently, if your ad will appear for a user’s search on the Google Search Network. Quality Score and CPC bid also determine ad rank, which is crucial, especially for marketers with a tight budget. The Google Search Network’s ad ranking formula is as follows:
CPC bid x Quality Score equals Ad rank.
Even if their offer is lower than a competitor’s bid with a lower Google Ad Quality Score, marketers with limited budgets can work hard to optimize their accounts and wind up in top ad positions by using Quality Score to determine ad rank. Quality Score likewise impacts the Google Display Network’s ad placement. The following is the ad rank calculation for keyword-targeted ads:
Display Network Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank
Google considers your offer, either for the ad group or individual placements, and your ad group Google Ad Quality Score for placement-targeted advertising on the GDN. The following is the Google Display Network’s ad rank formula for placement-targeted advertisements:
Bid x Quality Score equals Ad Rank.
Ultimately, your quality score impacts the health and success of your account. Your term could not even be able to enter an auction if your keyword-level Quality Score is too low, which would prevent your ad from appearing and competing for a searcher’s attention. Your ad rank will be low if your Quality Score is low, which will probably result in less traffic to your website and a lower ROI.
Myths about Google Ad Quality Score
We’ve explained the many categories of Google Ads Quality Score and why it’s essential for an account. We’d like to discuss Quality Score myths as our next topic.
Match Type Changes Impact Quality Scores.
Google calculates its Google Ad Quality Score largely without considering keyword match type. As a result, if you have the same keyword in your account as a broad, phrase, or exact match, all three will have the same Quality Score. Google will determine a keyword’s QS based on an exact match between a keyword and a query. For instance, the Quality Score for the keyword pink slippers will be the same as it would be for an exact match with the search term pink slippers. As a result, changing a keyword’s match type has no direct impact on the Quality Score of that keyword.
When ads or keywords are paused, the quality score suffers.
Because Google Ad Quality Score is based on how well your keywords and advertising perform, pausing your ads or keywords has no impact. There is no Quality Score to accumulate if they are not active, entering the auction, or being displayed.
Effects of Display and Search Quality Score
These Google Ad Quality Scores are distinct from one another, as stated before in the guide, and they are unrelated. The criteria used to calculate these Quality Scores varied to start. Second, it would be nearly impossible for Google to have the search and display networks interact. It won’t matter how well you do on one if you also do well on the other.
Better Pay Increases Your Quality Score.
This could appear to be the case at first glance, but the Google Ad Quality Score is modified to account for variations in ad position. The self-reinforcing nature of those higher positions is considered by Google, which adjusts its calculation to account for the fact that higher positions naturally generate a higher CTR than lower positions.
Low-QS Elements’ histories are erased when they are deleted or restructured.
That is untrue. Whether you pause, delete, or restructure an account element, Google claims its prior performance will continue impacting your account history. Nevertheless, Google advises that you delete underperforming keywords and advertising even if doing so won’t remove their history from your account; doing so will stop them from adversely influencing your account history. The adverse effects of these underperforming components will diminish over time as more performance data is gathered, but they will never totally disappear.
Improve Your Google Ad Quality Score
Here are a few possible causes of poor Google Ad Quality Score: When attempting to raise your Quality Score, be sure to go through this checklist:
Verify the URLs of your destinations. Have you recently made any landing page changes? Are there any broken destination URLs? Do all of them lead to functional landing pages? Suggestions for their replacement follow the following list of symbols that might damage your destination URLs:
- Remove the forward and backward slashes (/), and use a space or a dash in their place.
- Commas should be swapped out for a dash or a blank space.
- A hyphen should replace apostrophes.
- Parentheses should be replaced with nothing.
- Ampersands should be swapped out for a space or a dash.
Use Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics to check the speed of your website. If your page’s load time is below this threshold, it can hurt your Quality Score because Google considers a slow load time to be the regional average plus three seconds.
- Learn more about the causes of a delayed load time.
- Check out Google’s Chrome and Firefox plugins for page speed.
- Rewrite ads with a low click-through rate. According to Google, a low CTR is 1.5% or less.
- Make sure each ad group contains three or more extended text ads.
- Make sure your ads contain the best-performing keywords.
- To increase CTR, think about using Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) advertising.
- Audit your accounts and, where necessary, reorganize.
- Pause keywords with a CTR of 1.5% or less and few or no conversions.
- Make ad groupings that are more narrowly themed and smaller.
- Make sure that each ad group’s landing pages are pertinent.
If you don’t have any broad-match keywords, think about adding some. New keywords you add to your account are assigned a starting Google Ad Quality Score based on the account’s past performance. If you’re only using phrases and exact matches, consider adding in the broad game to help the keywords reach the impression threshold so they can start accruing their unique Google Ad Quality Score. A new keyword only starts showing a Quality Score that is uniquely its own once it reaches the impression threshold.
