Two plumbing businesses in the same city. Both bidding on the keyword “emergency plumber near me.” Both appearing in position three on the same results page.
Business A is paying £5.40 per click. Business B is paying £14.20 per click.
Business B is spending 163 percent more for the same ad position and the same keyword. Over a month of 200 clicks each, Business A spends £1,080. Business B spends £2,840. Same number of leads. More than £1,700 difference in cost.
Business B has no idea this is happening. They see their spend, they see their leads, and they assume that is just what Google Ads costs. They have never heard of Quality Score.
What Quality Score is and why Google uses it
Google Ads operates as an auction, but it isn’t a simple highest-bidder-wins auction. Your actual cost per click and your ad position are both determined by a combination of your bid and the quality of your ads.
Quality Score is a number from 1 to 10 that Google assigns to each keyword in your account. It reflects how relevant and useful Google considers your ad and landing page to be for people searching that keyword. A high Quality Score (7 to 10) means Google sees your ad as a good match for what searchers want. A low Quality Score (1 to 4) means Google sees it as a poor match.
Strictly speaking, the 1–10 number is a diagnostic: Google calculates quality in real time at every auction, using more signals than the score shows. But the score is the best window you have into how Google rates you, and the three components behind it point directly to what needs fixing.
The practical consequence is that advertisers with high quality pay less per click for the same position than advertisers with low quality. Google rewards relevance with lower costs and penalizes irrelevance with higher costs. That penalty is applied silently, on every click, and most advertisers have never looked at the Quality Score columns in their account.
How to find your Quality Score
In Google Ads, go to the keywords view and add the columns Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad relevance and Landing page experience. Each component is rated Above average, Average or Below average. Sort by spend, and look at your most expensive keywords first. That is where a low score costs the most.
The three things Google measures to calculate your Quality Score
Expected click-through rate
Google uses its historical data to predict how likely your ad is to be clicked when it appears for a specific search. An ad that uses the words the searcher typed, has a headline that directly matches the search intent and has a clear value proposition earns a strong expected CTR rating.
An ad with a generic headline that could apply to any plumber in any city, regardless of what the searcher typed, has a lower predicted CTR, and that drags down this part of the score.
The fix: for each keyword group, write ad copy that reflects exactly what someone typing that keyword is looking for. “Emergency Plumber Available Now” for emergency keywords. “Boiler Repair Specialists” for boiler keywords. The more precisely your headline mirrors the search intent, the higher your expected CTR. Ad assets such as call buttons, sitelinks and location help too, because they make the ad bigger and more useful.
Ad relevance
Ad relevance measures how closely your ad copy matches the intent of the keyword that triggered it. If your ad for “boiler repair” talks about general plumbing services, Google considers the match poor. If it specifically addresses boiler repair, the match is strong.
Most Google Ads accounts have too few ad groups with too many keywords in each. Every keyword in an ad group is served the same ad copy. A single ad group containing “emergency plumber,” “boiler repair,” “blocked drain” and “bathroom fitting” is serving one set of ad copy to four completely different search intents. The result is poor ad relevance for every keyword in the group except the one closest to the headline.
The fix: break keywords into tighter, more specific ad groups by theme, each with dedicated ad copy that addresses the intent of the keywords in that group.
Landing page experience
Google also evaluates the page your ad links to. A landing page that addresses what the searcher typed, loads quickly and makes it easy to take the next step earns a high landing page experience rating. A page that is slow, generic or makes visitors hunt for the information they came for earns a low one.
The fix: send each ad group to the most relevant page, ideally a page dedicated to that service. Put the service name in the main heading, keep the phone number and form visible on mobile, and fix slow loading caused by oversized images and heavy scripts.
This is why a low Quality Score isn’t only a bidding problem. It reflects the quality of your entire paid search journey, from the search to the click to the page the visitor lands on. Fixing each component in sequence is what moves Quality Scores from 3 to 8.
What the numbers look like when Quality Score improves
Google doesn’t publish a fixed price table, but industry analyses of Google Ads accounts have long pointed to the same pattern. Commonly cited estimates suggest that around a Quality Score of 6 advertisers pay roughly the benchmark rate; at 4, around 25 percent more; and at 2, as much as 400 percent more. At the other end, a score of 8 is associated with paying around 37 percent less, and a score of 10 around 50 percent less. Treat these as directional rather than exact, but the message is consistent: low scores are expensive.
Take a business spending £3,000 a month on Google Ads with average Quality Scores of 3 to 4. Raising those scores to 7 to 8 can mean getting roughly the same results from around £1,800 to £2,000 of spend. Put another way, the same budget buys 40 to 50 percent more clicks, more leads and more booked jobs, without spending a penny more.
Business B, in the opening example, tightened its ad groups, rewrote its ad copy for each keyword group, and improved its landing page load time and relevance. Three months later, its average Quality Score on core keywords had moved from 3.4 to 7.8. Its average CPC on the same keywords had dropped from £14.20 to £5.80. Monthly spend stayed the same. Monthly leads nearly tripled.
A step-by-step Quality Score fix
- Audit: add the Quality Score columns and list your highest-spend keywords with scores of 5 or below.
- Diagnose: for each, note which component is Below average: expected CTR, ad relevance or landing page.
- Restructure: split mixed ad groups into tight themes, one service or intent per group.
- Rewrite ads: put the keyword theme in the headlines and add relevant assets.
- Fix landing pages: match each ad group to a dedicated, fast, mobile-friendly page.
- Clean up traffic: add negative keywords so ads only show for searches you want.
- Review monthly: scores update as new data comes in, so track progress and repeat.
Common mistakes
- Raising bids to fix poor performance. If quality is low, higher bids just make each click more expensive.
- Sending every ad to the homepage. It rarely matches the specific search intent.
- Chasing the number instead of the business result. Quality Score is a guide. The goal is a lower cost per lead and more booked jobs.
- Never looking. Most of the damage happens in accounts where nobody has checked.
FAQ
What is a good Google Ads Quality Score?
Seven or above is generally a strong score on core keywords. Scores of 4 or below usually mean you are paying a premium per click and should be looked at first, especially on high-spend keywords.
How long does it take to improve Quality Score?
Changes to ad groups, ads and landing pages can start to show within a few weeks as Google gathers new data. Meaningful, stable improvement usually takes one to three months, which matches the timeline in the example above.
Does Quality Score affect Performance Max or other campaign types?
The 1–10 Quality Score is reported for Search keywords. But the same principles, relevant ads, good landing pages and accurate targeting, influence costs and performance across Google Ads campaign types.
Paying more per click than you should? See our Google Ads management or book a free Quality Score audit.
Digiwolves manages Google Ads campaigns for contractors and businesses across the US and UK. Google Premier Partner certified.
