Quality Score controls what you pay per click in Google Ads. It's a 1-10 number that Google assigns to every keyword in your account, and it acts as a multiplier on your cost per click. If yours is high, you pay less. If it's low, you pay more. Sometimes a lot more.
It doesn’t show up as a line item on your invoice. You don’t get a charge that says "Quality Score penalty: $2,400." You just pay more per click than the person in the ad slot next to you, and unless someone actually pulls the data and does the math, you’d never know it was happening.
Most agencies never bring up Quality Score with their clients. It’s easier to blame "competitive markets" for high CPCs than to explain that the ads themselves are the reason clicks cost so much. We check it on every account we audit, and it’s rare that someone has actually done the math on what it’s costing them.
This post is part of our 12-point Google Ads audit. Quality Score is step 4 because it can’t be properly evaluated until you’ve verified conversion tracking, reviewed campaign performance, and looked at search terms first.
How Quality Score Works
Google calculates Quality Score using three components. Understanding which one is dragging you down is more important than the overall number.
Expected Click-Through Rate is Google’s prediction of how likely someone is to click your ad compared to other advertisers showing for the same search. This is the one that matters most. It’s not your actual CTR. Google is comparing your ad’s historical performance against everyone else competing in the same auctions. If your competitors write more compelling ads than you, your Expected CTR drops, and you pay more per click because of it.
Ad Relevance measures how closely your ad copy matches what the person actually searched for. If someone searches "emergency plumber" and your ad says "Professional Home Services," that’s a relevance gap. If your ad says "Emergency Plumber Available Now," that’s a match. This component carries less weight than the other two in Google’s formula, but it still factors in.
Landing Page Experience evaluates the page someone lands on after they click your ad. Google’s AdsBot crawls your landing pages roughly every two weeks and compares them against your competitors’ pages for the same search terms over a rolling 90-day window. Page speed, mobile experience, content relevance to the ad, and basic trust signals like HTTPS and visible contact info all play into the rating.
Each component gets rated Below Average, Average, or Above Average. Based on Search Engine Land’s analysis of 15,000+ Google Ads accounts, the formula works out to roughly 3.5 possible points each for Expected CTR and Landing Page Experience, and slightly less for Ad Relevance. Improving your click-through rate or your landing page has about twice the impact of improving ad relevance alone.
Google also introduced an AI-based quality prediction model in 2025 that evaluates user experience before showing the ad, not just after. It looks at navigation experience on your landing page, flagging confusing or unexpected destinations. They’re applying organic search quality standards (E-E-A-T) to paid ads now, which is a good thing if your pages are legitimate and well-built.
The CPC Multiplier Table
Google uses Quality Score as a multiplier on your cost per click. Most accounts sit around QS 5, so that’s a useful baseline. Everything above 5 is a discount on what you’re currently paying. Everything below 5 is a penalty.
| Quality Score | CPC vs. QS 5 | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 0.50x | Half of what you're paying now |
| 9 | 0.56x | 44% less |
| 8 | 0.63x | 37% less |
| 7 | 0.71x | 29% less |
| 6 | 0.83x | 17% less |
| 5 | 1.0x | Baseline (where most accounts sit) |
| 4 | 1.25x | 25% more |
| 3 | 1.67x | 67% more |
| 2 | 2.5x | 2.5x more |
| 1 | 5.0x | 5x more |
I should note that this table comes from third-party analysis (WordStream, Store Growers, and others), not from Google directly. Google has never published official multipliers. But the data is consistent across multiple independent studies, and the directional impact is real. Accounts with QS 8+ pay about 37% less per click than the median, while accounts at QS 4 or below pay about 64% more, based on 2026 benchmark data across thousands of accounts.
In practical terms, if your competitor has a QS of 8 and you have a QS of 4, they might be paying $4 per click while you’re paying around $8 for the same position in the same auction. Same keyword, same geography, same time of day. The only difference is the quality of the ad and the landing page. Multiply that gap across hundreds or thousands of clicks per month and you start to see where the money goes.
Does Quality Score Still Matter With Smart Bidding?
Yes. Smart Bidding doesn’t bypass ad quality. It bids around it.
Google has been downplaying Quality Score as a metric since about 2020. Their messaging is that the visible 1-10 number is a "diagnostic tool" and that the real-time auction uses more sophisticated signals than what that number represents. That’s technically true. The live auction considers your query, device, location, time of day, and a bunch of other contextual factors that the static QS number doesn’t capture.
But the underlying ad quality signals that Quality Score reflects still directly affect what you pay in every auction. How compelling your ads are, how relevant they are to the search, how good your landing page is. An ad with QS 4 running on Maximize Conversions will still cost more per conversion than an ad with QS 8 on the same strategy, because the auction still rewards better ad quality with lower CPCs. Optmyzr’s 2026 analysis confirmed that Quality Score remains an important economic factor even in fully automated accounts.
I think of Quality Score as a thermometer, not a thermostat.
You don’t optimize ‘for’ Quality Score. You optimize the things it measures and Quality Score reflects the improvement. If the thermometer says you have a fever, you don’t fix the thermometer. You treat the cause.
How to Check Yours
Go to Keywords in your Google Ads account. Click the Columns icon and add four columns: Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad relevance, and Landing page exp. Sort by cost descending so you’re looking at the keywords that are actually spending your money.
Focus on two things. First, your overall distribution. What percentage of your ad spend goes to keywords at QS 7 or above? That’s the healthy zone. If 60% or more of your spend is at QS 7+, you’re in decent shape. If most of your spend is sitting at QS 4-5, you have a structural problem that’s costing you real money every day.
Second, look at the component ratings on your highest-spend keywords. The overall QS number tells you there’s a problem, but the three components tell you what the problem actually is. Expected CTR Below Average on most keywords? Your ad copy needs work. Your competitors are writing ads that get clicked more often. Landing Page Experience Below Average? Your website is the issue and ad copy changes won’t fix it. Ad Relevance Below Average? Your ad groups are probably too broad and you need tighter keyword-to-ad alignment.
How to Calculate What It’s Costing You
Once you have the data, the math is straightforward. Take each keyword’s actual spend, note its QS, and use the multiplier table to estimate what you’d be paying at a higher score.
If a keyword at QS 4 spent $1,000 over 90 days, it’s costing you about 25% more than it would at QS 5, and about 75% more than it would at QS 7. Getting that keyword from QS 4 to QS 7 would save roughly $430 on that one keyword over 90 days. Now do that math for every keyword in the account.
We audited a multi-location account recently where 93% of the ad spend was going to keywords at QS 4 and 5. Expected CTR was Below Average on 92% of all keywords with data. The root cause was generic ad copy that didn’t differentiate the business from any of its local competitors. Every ad group was running the same headlines: "Comprehensive Services," "Professional Care," "Near You." Could have been any business in any industry in any city.
On another account, an ecommerce business, the spend-weighted average QS was 6.3 with only 36.5% of spend at QS 7 or above. The overpay was running $3,000-$4,000 per quarter on just the top 20 keywords. The problem there was Landing Page Experience. Every product page was loading in 15-20 seconds on mobile because of almost 900KB of unused JavaScript from the site theme. Desktop scores were fine, but mobile was unusable. Since most paid search traffic comes from mobile, that’s most of their clicks hitting a page that barely loads.
What Drags Quality Score Down
We audit accounts across a lot of verticals and the same problems come up in almost every one.
Generic ad copy is the number one cause. Headlines like "High-Quality Professional Services" or "Trusted Local Business" don’t tell the searcher anything useful about why they should pick you over the other three ads on the page. Google measures your Expected CTR against everyone else showing for the same search. If their ads are more specific and yours are generic, you lose. This is especially common in accounts where the same RSA runs across multiple ad groups. If your "kitchen remodel" ad group and your "bathroom remodel" ad group have identical headlines, Google can’t serve intent-matched copy and both ad groups suffer.
Slow landing pages are the second biggest issue. If your landing page takes more than 2.5 seconds to load on mobile (the LCP threshold for Core Web Vitals), you’re getting penalized on Landing Page Experience. Google confirmed in 2025 that a 1-second delay in mobile load time can reduce conversions by up to 20%. With their new navigation prediction model, they’re also evaluating whether your landing page is confusing or leads somewhere unexpected. A dedicated service page will almost always score better than a homepage that lists everything.
Mismatched landing pages make it worse. If the keyword is "commercial HVAC repair" and your ad mentions HVAC repair, but the click goes to a general homepage listing twelve services, AdsBot picks up that disconnect on its bi-weekly crawl. The fix takes time but it’s straightforward: build a dedicated page for each high-spend service.
Brand keywords below QS 8 are a red flag. You own your business name. If those keywords aren't scoring 8-10, something is structurally wrong. Usually it's a landing page that doesn't match the brand terms, or ad copy that's not aligned with what people type when they search for you.
What to Fix First
The priority is based on what carries the most weight in the formula and what affects the most spend.
Start by identifying which component is the primary drag on your highest-spend keywords. If Expected CTR is Below Average across the board, focus on ad copy. Write headlines that match what the person searched and give them a reason to click on you instead of the ad above or below you. If Landing Page Experience is the issue, fix page speed and content relevance before you touch the ads. If Ad Relevance is the problem, tighten your ad groups so keywords and ads actually match each other.
Focus on the highest-spend keywords first. Improving QS from 4 to 7 on a keyword that spends $3,000 per month saves you a lot more than the same improvement on a keyword spending $50. Sort by spend, fix the expensive ones, and work your way down.
Give it time after you make changes. Quality Score is based on a rolling 90-day window and recalculates after AdsBot recrawls your pages, which happens roughly every two weeks. You won’t see movement overnight, but you should see changes within 2-4 weeks if the improvements are real.
Clean Up the Keyword List Too
Quality Score gets most of the attention, but keyword hygiene is the other half of this equation. A bloated keyword list with a bunch of dead weight fragments your budget and makes it harder for Smart Bidding to learn.
Sort your keywords by Quality Score ascending and look for anything at QS 1-3 with real spend behind it. Those keywords are actively hurting your account. They need to be paused, restructured into a better-matched ad group, or have the ad copy rewritten to actually match them.
Look for keywords with 60-90 days of spend and zero conversions. If a keyword has been spending money for three months without a single lead, it’s not going to start now. Pause it or tighten the match type to exact.
Check for duplicate keywords across campaigns. If two campaigns bid on the same keyword and they target the same geography, they’re competing against each other in the auction, splitting the data, and preventing either one from learning. For location-based campaigns targeting separate areas, the same keyword across campaigns is fine because they never enter the same auction. But if two campaigns overlap geographically and share keywords, that’s self-competition.
Watch for broad match keywords running without Smart Bidding. Broad match tells Google "show my ads for anything you think is related to this keyword." Without Smart Bidding to control where the budget goes, it will expand into searches you never intended to pay for. If a campaign is running broad match on Manual CPC or Max Clicks, check the search terms report. You’ll probably find the answer pretty quickly.
What This Actually Costs Your Business
Quality Score isn’t a vanity metric. It directly affects your cost per click, which affects your cost per lead, which affects what you’re paying to acquire a customer. If you’re running Google Ads and nobody has ever pulled up your Quality Score distribution and done the math, you’re almost certainly overpaying and don’t know it.
If your agency has never shown you your Quality Score distribution or calculated the overpay, ask them to. If they can’t, that tells you something too.
This is one of the 12 steps in our full Google Ads audit process. If you want us to run the math on your account, request a free audit and we’ll show you exactly what your Quality Score is costing you.
