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Google Ads Quality Score Checker

Enter your Quality Score and component ratings to get a prioritised fix list, a modelled CPC savings estimate, and specific action steps for each signal Google is penalising you on.

3QS Signals
CPCImpact Calc
PriorityFix List
FreeAlways
QS Optimizer

What is your Quality Score telling you?

Diagnose one keyword by hand, or paste your whole keyword export and let the tool rank every problem keyword by how much money it is costing you.

1
Open Google Ads → Campaigns → Keywords
In the left sidebar, click Campaigns, then select Keywords from the sub-menu.
2
Add the Quality Score column if it's not visible
Click the Columns button (grid icon, top right of the keywords table) → search "Quality Score" → click Apply. A column showing 1–10 will appear.
3
Note your keyword's Quality Score (1–10)
Find the keyword you want to diagnose. Read the number in the Qual. Score column — enter that number in the circle below. If you see a dash (—) instead of a number, that keyword hasn't received enough impressions yet for Google to calculate a score. Run your campaign for a few more days and check again.
4
Find the component ratings — hover the speech bubble icon
In the Qual. Score column, hover your mouse over the speech bubble icon (💬) next to the score. A small popup appears showing three ratings for that keyword.
This is what you will see in Google Ads:
Keyword Qual. Score Status
digital marketing course bangalore 7 💬 ← hover this ✓ Eligible
Quality Score components
Expected click-through rateAverage
Ad relevanceAbove average
Landing page experienceBelow average
↑ These are the ratings you select in the tool below
Enter here ↑
Score Range
12345 678910
Enter your score above

In Google Ads → Keywords tab, hover the 💬 icon in the Qual. Score column next to your keyword. A popup shows these three ratings — select exactly what it says for each one below.

Expected Click-Through Rate Average
Ad Relevance Average
Landing Page Experience Average
Optional — paste your actual keyword, headline and landing page Everything above is generic advice for your ratings. Fill these in and the tool runs real checks against your ad instead.
Optional — Enter these for a monthly savings estimate
₹
Digital Market Academy · Quality Score Report
✅ Your priority fix list is ready — scroll down to read it
—
Your QS
→
—
Target QS
→
—
CPC Reduction
How this number is produced. It uses the long-standing industry model that cost per click moves inversely with Quality Score — the figure above is simply your CPC × your QS ÷ target QS. Google publishes no Quality Score to CPC formula, and the 1–10 score in your account is a historical diagnostic rather than the value used in the live auction. Treat this as the size of the opportunity, not a quote. If you run Target CPA or Target ROAS you never set a CPC, so the same quality gain will show up as more impression share and a lower cost per conversion instead.
Here is what to fix first — ordered by how many keywords each fix moves
Fix it with the right tool
Track this keyword over time
Quality Score moves over weeks, not hours. Save a snapshot now, come back after your next round of changes, and the tool will show you what actually moved. Saved in this browser only — nothing is uploaded, and clearing your browser data clears it.
Score Reference

What does each Quality Score mean?

The percentages below come from the standard industry model, benchmarked against a QS 5 baseline. Google does not publish a Quality Score to CPC formula, so read these as the size of the opportunity, not as a quote.

1–3
Poor
Significant issues with relevance. You are paying up to 5× more per click than at QS 5. Urgent action needed.
4–5
Fair
Below the baseline. At QS 4 you pay about 25% more per click than at QS 5, and about 75% more than a rival at QS 7. Usually fixable within 2–3 weeks.
6
Average
At or near the industry baseline. Small structural improvements to ad groups or landing pages will push you above average.
7–8
Good
Well-optimised. You are paying roughly 29–38% less per click than at the QS 5 baseline. Focus on landing page speed and creative testing.
9–10
Excellent
Top-tier performance. You pay up to 50% less per click than the QS 5 baseline. Maintain through regular creative refreshes.
The Three Signals

How Google calculates your Quality Score

Google has never published how the three are weighted, and anyone quoting exact percentages is guessing. What is knowable is the scope of each one — how many keywords a single fix moves. That is what the badges below show, and it is why the fix list leads with landing page experience.

👇
Expected Click-Through Rate
Scope: one keyword + ad
Google predicts how likely your ad is to be clicked relative to other ads for the same keyword. Key factors:
  • Historical CTR of the keyword and match type
  • CTR of your display URL
  • How closely the ad matches the search query
  • Device and location of the searcher
  • Ad headline relevance to the keyword
🎯
Ad Relevance
Scope: one ad group
How closely your ad matches the theme and intent of the keyword. Key factors:
  • Keyword present in headline 1
  • Ad group keyword theme tightness
  • Match between keyword intent and ad message
  • Display URL path relevance
  • Match type (exact vs broad changes the relevance signal)
🏠
Landing Page Experience
Scope: every keyword on that URL
How useful and relevant your landing page is for users who click the ad. Key factors:
  • Content relevance to the search query
  • Page load speed (especially mobile)
  • Message match between ad and page
  • Ease of navigation and clarity of CTA
  • Absence of deceptive or intrusive content
Deeper Diagnosis

Still Below Average after doing everything right?

The standard advice — tighten your ad groups, put the keyword in headline 1, speed up your page — fixes the obvious cases. These are the causes that survive that checklist, and they are the ones still broken in most accounts.

Ad Relevance 4 causes
Broad match is matching queries you never intended Most common
Your keyword says running shoes; Google is serving it against how to clean sneakers. Ad Relevance is judged against what people actually searched, not against your keyword text. Open the Search Terms report before you touch the ad copy — if the queries are off-theme, no headline rewrite will fix the rating.
The ad group has no eligible RSA
If your only responsive search ad is paused, disapproved, or limited by policy, the ad group has nothing to be relevant with. Check the Ads & assets tab and confirm at least one ad shows “Eligible”.
The same keyword exists in two ad groups
Google serves only one, and it picks the one with the stronger history — so the carefully written ad you are looking at may never run. The duplicate quietly accumulates the poor stats. Run a duplicate-keyword check across the whole account.
One RSA is being asked to cover ten intents
Not just “too many keywords” — too many different jobs. Price, near me, reviews and vs competitor queries need different messages. Asset-level pinning helps, but splitting the ad group helps more.
Landing Page Experience 6 causes
Google cannot fetch the page at all Silent killer
Landing pages are evaluated by a crawler. A robots.txt disallow, a WAF or bot-protection rule, Cloudflare bot-fight mode, or geo-blocking will all stop it — and Google reports nothing, you just sit at Below Average forever. Test the exact final URL in Search Console → URL Inspection.
The final URL is your homepage
A homepage is relevant to everything in general and nothing in particular. Send each ad group to a page that answers its specific query.
Something stands between the click and the content
A cookie wall, age gate, region selector, newsletter modal, or full-screen app-install interstitial. If a visitor has to dismiss something before reading, that counts against you.
The final URL redirects
Cross-domain hops, http → https → www chains, or a mobile redirect that lands somewhere different from desktop. Paste the final URL into a redirect checker and confirm it resolves in one hop.
The page content is in a shell the crawler cannot read
Copy rendered entirely by JavaScript after load, or text baked into images. View the page source, not the rendered page — if your value proposition is not in the HTML, assume it was not scored.
Intent mismatch, not quality mismatch
An informational keyword (what is X, how does X work) pointed at a checkout page, or a ready-to-buy keyword pointed at a blog post. The page can be excellent and still score Below Average because it answers the wrong question.
Expected CTR 4 causes
You are bidding on someone else’s brand
On a competitor or brand-comparison term you are being measured against the brand owner, who will almost always win expected CTR on their own name. Average is a realistic ceiling here. Judge these keywords on cost per conversion, not on Quality Score.
Location targeting is set to “presence or interest”
The default. Your ad shows to people merely showing interest in your area from anywhere in the world — they see it, they do not click, expected CTR falls. Switch to Presence for local-service campaigns.
The ad has no assets
Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets and images change how much of the results page your ad occupies, which changes how often it is clicked. Missing assets suppress real CTR and therefore the expected-CTR rating.
You edited the ad last week
Expected CTR is a historical measure. A rewrite resets nothing instantly — it takes roughly one to three weeks of click data before the rating catches up. Do not judge a change before then, and do not stack three changes inside that window.
Before you fix anything 2 checks
Check the impression volume first
Quality Score is built from exact-match impression history. On a keyword with a few dozen impressions the three ratings are close to noise — you can spend a week “fixing” a number that was never a signal. Sort by impressions and work top-down.
Check how old the account is
For a new keyword or a new account, Google seeds the initial estimate from related keywords and overall account history. An early Below Average often reflects thin data rather than a real defect. Give it impressions before you restructure.
Reality Check

Eight Quality Score myths that cost advertisers money

Most of these were true once, or were never true but sounded plausible. All of them are still repeated in agency decks and forum threads — and acting on them wastes real budget.

✗ Myth
“Pause the keyword and re-add it to reset a bad Quality Score.”
✓ Reality
Removing and re-adding the same keyword in the same account does not wipe its history. The quality signals persist, so you get the same rating back — minus the performance data you could have learned from. There is no reset button.
✗ Myth
“The 1–10 Quality Score is the number Google plugs into the auction.”
✓ Reality
It is a reported diagnostic, aggregated from past exact-match impressions. The auction estimates ad quality live for every individual query, using the searcher’s exact wording, device, location and context. Your reported 6 is a rear-view mirror, not an input. That is exactly why it is useful for diagnosis and unreliable for prediction.
✗ Myth
“A dash (—) in the Quality Score column is a bad score.”
✓ Reality
A dash means not enough data, not zero. New keywords and low-volume keywords show a dash because there have not been enough exact-match impressions to report on. It is not costing you anything and there is nothing to fix.
✗ Myth
“Raising my bid will raise my Quality Score.”
✓ Reality
Bid is not an input to Quality Score. A higher bid buys position; it does not change ad relevance or landing page experience. And expected CTR is normalised for position, so climbing the page does not credit you for the extra clicks that position alone earns.
✗ Myth
“Quality Score is calculated per ad group or per campaign.”
✓ Reality
It is reported per keyword. Any “account Quality Score” you see is a weighted average somebody invented — Google does not publish one. What is shared is landing page experience: every keyword pointing at the same URL tends to inherit the same rating, which is why one weak page can drag down dozens of keywords at once. Fix the page, move the whole cluster.
✗ Myth
“Landing page experience is basically a page speed score.”
✓ Reality
Speed is one input and rarely the deciding one. Relevance to the query, original and useful content, transparency about who you are and what you do with visitors’ data, and easy navigation all weigh in. A page that loads in 0.8 seconds and never mentions what the searcher typed will still rate Below Average.
✗ Myth
“Quality Score stopped mattering once everyone moved to Smart Bidding.”
✓ Reality
You no longer set a max CPC, so you never see a “discount” — but ad quality still decides whether you clear the threshold to enter the auction and what you pay when you do. On Target CPA or Target ROAS, a quality improvement shows up as more impression share and a lower cost per conversion at the same target, not as a smaller CPC figure. The three component ratings remain the only free window Google gives you into how it judges your account.
✗ Myth
“The goal is to get every keyword to 10.”
✓ Reality
Quality Score is a means, not a scoreboard. A QS 6 keyword converting at ₹400 beats a QS 10 keyword converting at ₹4,000 every single time. Chase the scores attached to real spend and real conversions; ignore the QS 4 keyword that gets thirty impressions a month, however much it irritates you.
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FAQ

Common questions about Quality Score

What is Quality Score in Google Ads?
Quality Score is Google's 1 to 10 rating of the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. A higher score means Google considers your ad more relevant to the user's search, resulting in a lower cost per click and better ad placement for the same bid.
What are the three components of Quality Score?
Quality Score has three components: Expected Click-Through Rate (how likely your ad is to be clicked relative to others for the same keyword), Ad Relevance (how closely your ad matches the user's search intent), and Landing Page Experience (how useful and relevant your landing page is for users who click through). Each is rated Above Average, Average, or Below Average.
How does Quality Score affect my cost per click?
Better ad quality means you pay less for the same position. The widely used industry rule of thumb is that advertisers around QS 10 pay roughly 50 percent less per click than the QS 5 baseline, and QS 1 can cost up to 5 times more — this is a long-standing estimate, not a figure Google publishes. Mechanically, your position is set by Ad Rank, which Google calculates from your bid, auction-time ad quality (expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience), the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search, and the expected impact of your assets and ad formats. Your actual CPC is then driven by what it takes to beat the advertiser below you. One important caveat: the 1 to 10 score in the Keywords tab is a historical diagnostic, not the number fed into the live auction.
How do I improve my Expected CTR?
Include your target keyword in headline 1 of your RSA. Use specific numbers, timeframes, and offers in headlines. Add a strong CTA in headline 3. Review your Search Term Report to remove irrelevant queries with negative keywords. Test question-based headlines that match user intent. Remove low-performing keywords from your ad group so the historical CTR data is not dragged down.
How do I improve Ad Relevance?
Split your ad group into tighter keyword themes — each ad group should ideally contain 5 to 15 closely related keywords. Include the target keyword in your headline and display URL path. Ensure your headlines directly address the intent behind the keyword. Try Dynamic Keyword Insertion for broad or phrase match campaigns. Remove keywords that do not closely match the core theme of the ad group.
How do I improve my Landing Page Experience score?
Match your landing page headline and CTA to your ad headline — this message match is the single most important factor. Ensure the page loads in under 3 seconds (test with Google PageSpeed Insights). Include your target keyword naturally in the page title and H1. Make the CTA visible above the fold on mobile. Remove pop-ups and interstitials. Ensure the page content matches the search intent — if the keyword is informational, the page should educate; if transactional, it should sell.
What is a good Quality Score?
A Quality Score of 7 or above is considered good. Scores of 8 to 10 are excellent and put you in the top tier for that keyword. Scores below 5 indicate significant issues and mean you are likely overpaying for every click. The industry average is around 5 to 6 for most keywords.
How long does it take to improve Quality Score?
Landing page improvements can reflect in Quality Score within a few days. CTR and Ad Relevance improvements typically take 1 to 3 weeks because Google needs enough click data to recalibrate its expected CTR model. Low-volume keywords take longer to update since there is less data. For brand new keywords, Google uses data from related keywords and the account's historical performance to assign an initial QS.
Does Quality Score affect impression share?
Yes. Ad quality is a component of Ad Rank, which determines whether your ad shows at all and in what position. A low-quality keyword can fail to clear the Ad Rank threshold and show no impressions even when you are bidding competitively, because Ad Rank combines your bid with auction-time ad quality, the Ad Rank thresholds, the context of the search, and the expected impact of your assets and ad formats. Improving quality is usually more efficient than simply raising bids, and on Smart Bidding it is the main lever you still control directly.
Should I delete keywords with a low Quality Score?
Not always. Low QS keywords that generate profitable conversions should be optimised, not deleted. However, keywords with QS 1 to 3 and no conversions over a meaningful period are likely wasting budget. Pause these, improve the ad group structure and landing page for similar terms, then re-enable them once the underlying issues are fixed.
Does Quality Score apply to Shopping or Display campaigns?
The 1 to 10 Quality Score metric applies specifically to Search campaigns. Google Shopping uses Product Landing Page Quality, and Display campaigns use a Quality Factor. However, the underlying principle is the same — relevance between your ad and landing page reduces your costs and improves your position across all campaign types.
Is this tool free to use?
Yes, completely free. No login, no credit card, no usage limit. All calculations run in your browser and no data is sent to a server. Use it as many times as you need.
About This Tool

Built to make QS optimisation less guesswork

Quality Score is one of the most impactful levers in Google Ads, yet most advertisers either ignore it or do not know where to start. This tool was built by the Digital Market Academy team in Bangalore to give you a clear, prioritised starting point.

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Join Rajesh Menon's live Google Ads course at Digital Market Academy. Learn campaign structure, Smart Bidding, Quality Score optimisation, RSA testing, and landing page strategy from the ground up.

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