Quality Score Checker: Understand & Improve Your Google Quality Score

Quality Score is Google’s way of keeping its users happy, and high Quality Scores save YOU, the advertiser, a lot of money. So how does this system work? How can you check and improve your Google Ads Quality Score? Read on to find out! WordStream’s free Google Ads Performance Grader is the single easiest way to find out how your Quality Scores measure up to similar businesses, as well as get actionable insights on how you can raise your scores. Read on to learn everything you need to know.

Free Google Quality Score checker: Check & improve your Google Quality Score

WordStream’s free Google Ads Performance Grader is a free tool that runs an instant audit of your Google Ads account and scores you in four key areas: Quality Score, account activity, impression share, and wasted spend.

The Quality Score report will show you:

• Your average campaign Quality Score.
• The distribution of impressions across Quality Scores 1-10 so you can see your most common Quality Scores as well as compare them to industry benchmarks.
• Estimates on how much money you could save or how many more clicks per month you could get by improving your score.

If you want to learn more about the components of Quality Score, stick around. If you’re just here to check your Quality Score, see how it stacks up to your competitors, and get real insights into how to improve it, go ahead and take our Free Google Ads Performance Grader for a spin.

What is Google Quality Score, exactly?

Quality Score for Google and the Search Network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords in Google Ads. It’s calculated using a proprietary formula and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query. Quality Score is measured on a scale from 1-10.

So why is this important?

Quality Score is important because the higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost per click (CPC) and the better its ad position. Why? Because Google doesn’t make money if users don’t click on its ads, so it benefits Google to serve ads that are relevant and trustworthy.

Here’s how the Google Ads auction works:

When your ad gets entered into the Google Ads auction, Google will first calculate your Quality Score. It will then multiply your Quality Score by your maximum bid to determine your Ad Rank. The ads with the highest Ad Rank scores are the ones that show. Google then calculates your cost per click by taking the Ad Rank score of the ad below yours, dividing it by your Quality Score, then adding one cent.

That’s a mouthful (and you can catch the full visual and explanation in the link above), but the important thing to know is that because of these formulas, higher Quality Scores equate to higher ad positions at lower costs.

How to improve your Google Ads Quality Score

High Quality Scores are obviously important if you want to get the best advertising value and rate of return possible. The question then becomes, how are the scores calculated? Google reports that the core components of Quality Score are as follows:

• The historical click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
• Your Google Ads account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

So basically, you need to:

• Maintain a high PPC click-through rate – The click-through rate is the percentage of people seeing your ad who actually click on it.
• Create relevant ad groups – An ad group consists of an association of one or more specific keywords which in turn trigger the display of one or more text ads. Ideally, the ad copy used in your text ads should closely reflect the keywords that are being bid on.
• Link your campaigns to relevant landing pages – The web page the user sees upon clicking your ad (i.e., the “destination URL”) also has to closely reflect the keywords that were used to trigger your pay-per-click advertising. For example, if you buy an ad for the search query “custom cabinets,” you should send the people who click on your ad to a page on your website that describes your custom cabinets.
• Do it all over and over again.

The most difficult thing here is the never-ending maintenance. Achieving high Quality Scores and managing PPC campaigns is an iterative process. It requires close attention to the factors mentioned above, and periodic adjustment.

Improve Your Google Quality Score with WordStream

WordStream’s Quality Score tools are uniquely designed to help search marketers carry out the proven best practices that improve relevance and raise Quality Scores. Find out how you can raise your Quality Scores with our free Google Ads Performance Grader.