Flight log / Transmission 018

How to improve Quality Score without touching your bids

Raising bids to fix Quality Score is turning up the radio to fix the engine. The score runs from 1 to 10, and not one of those points is for sale.

Most Quality Score advice is either a myth list or a pep talk. This one is a work order: what Quality Score is, the six moves that actually change it, the moves that don't, and what to expect when you're done.

If you haven't worked out which component is dragging your score down, start with ad relevance vs. landing page experience. That post is the diagnosis. This one is the treatment.

What is Quality Score, really?

Quality Score is a 1 to 10 rating Google Ads gives at the keyword level. It's built from three components: expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience. Each is rated Above average, Average or Below average against other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.

The part most people miss: Google states that Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction. It's a diagnostic tool. Google's own optimization guidance says to think of it as "a general indicator of which areas to focus on to improve ad quality, rather than a score to be optimized."

If it's not in the auction, why does it matter?

Because the auction runs on closely related ingredients, measured live. Google says Ad Rank weighs your bid, auction-time ad and landing page quality, Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search, and the expected impact of assets. That quality piece is calculated at auction time and, in Google's words, "can include" measurements like expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience.

And Google is explicit about the payoff: higher quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs. Quality also helps set the Ad Rank thresholds that decide whether your ad can appear at all, and Ad Rank decides whether it shows with assets like sitelinks.

So bids and quality are two separate levers on the same Ad Rank. Raising bids buys position at full price. Raising quality makes every dollar of bid go further. This post is about the second lever.

How do you improve Quality Score? The 6-step plan

1. Pull the report and sort by spend

In the Keywords view, add Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad relevance and Landing page exp., plus their historical versions, cost and conversions. Sort by cost. Your work list is the keywords that spend real money and have at least one Below average status. Everything else waits.

2. Split ad groups by intent

Google's recommendation for ad relevance is structural: organize keywords into tightly themed ad groups so each ad can speak to one intent. Its own example separates "engagement rings" from "wedding bands".

In B2B, the split is usually by job to be done, not by product. Say a 20-person SaaS team sells expense software. "Expense software for startups", "receipt scanning app" and "corporate card with expense management" are three different searches, even if one product answers all of them. Three ad groups, three ad sets, three pages.

3. Rewrite the ads for the tighter theme

Once an ad group means one thing, the ad can too. Put the core topic in at least one headline, which Google recommends directly, and write the remaining headlines around what that searcher cares about: outcome, proof, qualifier, offer. Our responsive search ads best practices post covers headline roles and pinning.

For expected CTR specifically, Google's guidance is to make the ad more compelling: highlight a unique benefit and write a clear call to action. Read the competition's ads on your top terms. If every rival leads with a free trial and you lead with "enterprise-grade platform," you've found the problem.

4. Send each ad group to the page that fits

Google's landing page guidance comes down to relevance and usability: choose a landing page that closely matches your ad and keywords, keep it fast and easy on mobile, make the next action obvious, and offer useful, original content.

The manual playbook: send each ad group to the most relevant page you already have. If no page fits a high-spend intent, build a dedicated one for it. Make the page's headline continue the ad's promise in the first line. That's message match, and our message match guide is the long version.

This step has the widest effort range. Rerouting an ad group to an existing feature page takes minutes. Building pages for your top intents takes real time, so do it in spend order.

5. Prune what doesn't belong

Some keywords are Below average on all three components because the searchers want something else. Competitor brand terms and broad category terms often fall here. If a keyword has had a fair run and converts poorly, pause it or move it to its own campaign with its own expectations. Then check the search term report for queries that shouldn't be matching at all and add negatives.

6. Wait, then verify

Statuses compare 90 days of data, so changes show up gradually. Note the date of each change, then check the historical Quality Score columns over the following weeks. Judge success on the business numbers too. Google's own guidance says to look at other metrics like clickthrough rate, conversion rate and site engagement, and calls Quality Score something that shouldn't be optimized as a KPI. Cost per qualified lead is the one that pays the bills.

A worked example (hypothetical)

Say the same expense software team finds one ad group, "expense management", eating a third of the budget. Its top keyword shows Ad relevance Average, Expected CTR Average and Landing page exp. Below average. Every ad in the group points at the homepage.

The plan writes itself. Step 2 splits the group into three intents: startup expense software, receipt scanning and corporate cards. Step 3 gives each its own RSA with the topic in a headline. Step 4 routes receipt scanning to the existing receipt feature page, corporate cards to the cards page, and flags startup expense software for a dedicated page because nothing fits. Step 5 adds negatives for job seekers and template hunters found in the search terms. Step 6 is a calendar reminder.

Notice what's missing: a bid change. None of it needs one.

What doesn't improve Quality Score?

What Quality Score should you expect?

Not every keyword can be a 10, and not every keyword should be. Because each status is relative to other advertisers on the same search, your ceiling depends on who you're up against.

• Brand terms tend to score high, because you're the most relevant answer.
• Core category terms with a dedicated ad group and page are where the plan above pays off most.
• Competitor terms tend to score low on ad relevance and landing page experience by design. The searcher wanted someone else. Judge them on cost per qualified lead, not Quality Score.
• Low-volume long-tail terms may never show a score. Manage them at the ad group level.

This is the wax-on part of paid search: unglamorous reps on structure, copy and pages that compound over months. No setting flips it overnight.

What we don't know

• Weights. Google doesn't publish how the three components combine into the 1 to 10 score, or how much each matters at auction time.
• AI Max side effects. With text customization and final URL expansion on, Google may change the ad text and the page a searcher sees. That can help or hurt the components, and it makes cause and effect harder to read.
• Time to move. There's no official timeline for how quickly statuses update after a change, beyond the 90-day comparison window.

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