How to audit quality score in Google Ads
How to audit quality score in Google Ads
Before we start auditing the Quality Score in Google Ads, we need to understand what Quality Score and Ad Quality are.
What is Quality score?
Quality Score is a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers.
This score is measured on a scale from 1-10. A higher Quality Score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant and quite possibly useful to someone searching for that specific keyword, compared to other advertisers.
What is Ad Quality?
Ad quality is an estimate of the experience that users have when they see your search ads.
Ad Quality can affect
Whether your ad can show: Google requires that ads meet a certain level of quality in order to show.
Where on the search results page your ad appears: To ensure people see higher quality ads higher on the search results page, Google considers ad quality in establishing your ad rank.
Whether extensions show: Some extensions for example only show above search results, and must have a high enough ad quality to appear in such a high ad position.
How much you pay per click: Higher quality ads typically cost less per click than lower quality ads. If your ads are low quality, you may find that your actual CPC is close to your maximum CPC even when there is low competition for the search terms that triggered your ad.
How your ads perform: High quality ads and landing pages are more likely to lead to successful clicks and conversions.
Ad Quality isn’t affected by
Bidding: The amount you bid may affect your Ad Rank, but it doesn’t impact the assessment of your ad quality
Account structure: Moving an ad group with the same ads and keywords to another campaign or account does not impact your ad quality.
Frequency of ads: How often your ads show is determined by your bids, budget, and keyword competition, but it does not affect your ad quality.
Conversions reported: Your reported conversions do not impact your ad quality.
Does it matter?
Yes, because it shows you how your ad compares to others. Also, it can show you how your ad used to perform historically.
Will it help me reduce my Google Ads costs?
Yes, because it will show you what is underperforming.
Do remember that it won’t show you why it is underperforming.
The best possible indicators for finding out why keywords are underperforming are ad relevance and landing page experience
How is it calculated?
Quality Score is calculated based on the combined performance of 3 components [CTR, Ad relevance, Landing page exp]:
Expected clickthrough rate (CTR): The likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown.
Ad relevance: How closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search.
Landing page experience: How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.
Each component is evaluated with a status of “Above average,” “Average,” or “Below average.” This evaluation is based on a comparison with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same keyword, over the last 90 days.
If one of these components has a status of “Average” or “Below average,” this may indicate an opportunity to make improvements.
Where can I find it?
In order to find Quality Score, you will need to
Sign in to your Google Ads account.
In the left menu, select Keywords.
In the upper right corner of the table, click the columns icon
Under “Modify columns for keywords”, open the Quality Score section. To view the current Quality Score and its component statuses, choose any of the following to add to your statistics table:
Quality Score
Landing Page Exp.
Exp. CTR
Ad Relevance
To view past Quality Score stats for the reporting period you’re looking at, choose any of the following metrics:
Quality Score (hist.)
Landing Page Exper. (hist.)
Ad Relevance (hist.)
Exp. CTR. (hist.)
Can I make it better?
Yes, you can.
Take a close look at the Quality score components.
Make ads that are more relevant to both the keywords inside the ad group and the searcher’s intent
Improve your CTR by creating better ads.
Update, upgrade or create a better landing page than that of your competitors
Compare Quality score to other metrics inside your Google Ads account such as CTR, Conversion Rates, etc.
Is it the most important thing in a Google Ad account?
No, because
Quality Score is not a key performance indicator and should not be optimized or aggregated with the rest of your data.
Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction. It’s a diagnostic tool to identify how ads that show for certain keywords affect the user experience.
Furthermore
Quality Score is based on historical impressions for exact searches of your keyword, therefore changing keyword match types will not impact Quality Score.
If you notice a “—” in the Quality Score column, it means there aren’t enough searches that exactly match your keywords to determine a keyword’s Quality Score.
There are factors related to your ad quality that might not be captured by Quality Score.
These factors include, but are not limited to:
Devices used in search
Location of user
Time of day
Ad extensions
Information obtained from any of Google’s various crawlers may be used to assess ad quality, which can be reflected through Quality Score.
If you want to know more about Google Ads audits, then visit the following link
Google Ads Audit guide & free [Notion & Google Sheets] template
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How to audit Google Ads campaigns