Quality Score is a value assigned by Google that is meant to estimate the relevancy of your ads, keywords and landing pages to a searcher looking at your ad. Each keyword you add to your account is assigned a Quality Score of 1-10, with 10 being best. When you first add in a keyword, Google assigns a Quality Score based on that keyword’s historical performance across all AdWords accounts. Once your keyword has hit a minimum threshold of impressions, Quality Score will increase or decrease depending on the performance of the particular keyword in your own account.
Google determines your Quality Score by looking at several factors:
- Keyword’s expected click-through-rate (CTR)
- Associated ad’s display URL CTR
- Overall CTR of all ads and keywords in your AdWords account
- Associated landing page quality
- Relevance of your keywords to the associated ad
- Relevance of your keyword to what customers are searching for
- Geographic performance
Keyword level Quality Score will vary by device and network; you will see different Quality Scores for different devices as well as for the Search and Display networks.
Why is Quality Score Important?
A higher Quality Score will lead to a better Ad Rank (value used to determine your ad position and where your ads are showing up on the page). Ad Rank is comprised of CPC bid, Quality Score, and the expected impact of ad formats and extensions. If you have a higher Ad Rank, it will be easier and cheaper for a keyword to enter the ad auction and achieve a higher position.
Keywords with higher Quality Scores pay lower actual cost-per-clicks than those with lower Quality Scores, so even if a competitor is bidding more, a high Quality Score keyword can still win a higher position at a lower price.