What Is a Good Quality Score in Google Ads
If you have ever had a client forward you a screenshot of a 4/10 keyword with the subject line "is this bad?", you already know why this question comes up so often. So let's answer it plainly: what is a good quality score in Google Ads? Seven or higher is good, 8 to 10 is strong, 5 to 6 is average, and anything at 4 or below is a signal that something in your keyword, ad or landing page combination is off.
The longer answer matters more, because Quality Score is one of the most misread numbers in the platform. It is a diagnostic, not a performance target. Chasing a perfect 10 on a keyword that gets 30 impressions a month wastes an afternoon you could have spent on the search terms report.
This guide covers what the score measures, what realistic quality score benchmarks look like, why the metric carries less weight in 2026 than it did in 2018, and how to explain it to a client in a sentence they will not need to re-read. Our guide to Google Ads metrics explained for clients pairs well with this one.
Last updated: August 2026
Key takeaways
- A good Quality Score in Google Ads is 7 or above. 8 to 10 is strong, 5 to 6 is average, and 4 or below usually points to a relevance or landing page problem.
- Quality Score is a 1 to 10 keyword-level diagnostic that exists only in Search campaigns. It does not apply to Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display or Shopping.
- Google does not publish an official average quality score for Google Ads, so treat any single industry benchmark figure as directional rather than a target.
- The score is built from three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, each rated below average, average or above average.
- Quality Score itself is not used in the live auction. Google calculates ad quality at auction time, and Quality Score is the reporting-friendly summary of it.
Table of contents
- What counts as a good Quality Score
- How Google actually calculates Quality Score
- What is the average Quality Score in Google Ads
- Quality Score benchmarks by keyword type
- Why Quality Score matters less than it used to
- How to improve Quality Score
- How to report Quality Score to clients
- Frequently asked questions
What counts as a good Quality Score
A good Quality Score in Google Ads is 7 or above on the 1 to 10 scale. Here is the range we use when we triage an account, and the action each band should trigger.
| Quality Score | Read it as | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 8 to 10 | Strong | Leave it alone. Protect budget and check impression share instead. |
| 7 | Good | Healthy for non-brand commercial keywords. No action needed. |
| 5 to 6 | Average | Worth a look if the keyword carries real spend. Check ad relevance first. |
| 3 to 4 | Weak | Ad group is probably too broad, or the landing page does not match the query. |
| 1 to 2 | Poor | Usually a keyword that should not be in this ad group, or a page mismatch. |
| "-" (no score) | Not enough data | The keyword has too few exact-match impressions. Ignore it. |
Two caveats before you take that table to a client meeting. First, context beats the number: a 6 on a competitive head term at high volume is worth far more to the account than a 10 on a branded keyword that was never going to be expensive anyway. Brand keywords inflate account averages and tell you almost nothing.
Second, the "-" is not a failure. Google only assigns a score once a keyword has accumulated enough exact-match impression history, so new and low-volume terms sit blank by design. That is documented behaviour, not a tracking bug.
How Google actually calculates Quality Score
Quality Score is calculated from three components, each reported next to the keyword as below average, average or above average.
Expected click-through rate. Google's estimate of how likely your ad is to be clicked when it shows for that keyword, normalised for position. This is the component most influenced by ad copy that mirrors the query.
Ad relevance. How closely your ad's message matches the intent behind the keyword. "Below average" here almost always means the ad group is carrying too many loosely related keywords for one set of ads to serve well.
Landing page experience. Whether the page delivers what the ad promised, loads quickly and is usable on mobile. Google's own guidance on this is in the Google Ads Help documentation for Quality Score, and it is worth reading with a client rather than paraphrasing.
Here is the part most guides skip. Quality Score is a reporting metric, not an auction input. The auction runs on Ad Rank, which Google describes as a combination of your bid, auction-time ad quality, the Ad Rank thresholds, the context of the person's search, and the expected impact of your assets and ad formats. Quality Score is the tidied-up daily summary of the same quality signals, which is why you can lift a score and see no movement in cost per click.
If your client's real question is about cost rather than score, our breakdown of what a good CPC looks like in Google Ads answers that directly.
What is the average Quality Score in Google Ads
Google does not publish an official average quality score for Google Ads accounts. That is the honest starting point, and it is more useful than it sounds, because it means nobody can hand you an authoritative "you should be at X" figure.
Third-party analyses of aggregated account data, most commonly the ones published over the years by WordStream, have generally placed typical account averages around the middle of the scale rather than at the top. Treat that as directional context, not a benchmark to manage towards. Sample, date, account mix and share of brand traffic all move that number, and none of them are disclosed in the version that gets screenshotted into a LinkedIn post.
Far more useful is your own account's impression-weighted Quality Score: each keyword's score multiplied by its impressions, summed, then divided by total impressions. A plain average gives a 2/10 keyword with 11 impressions the same weight as your highest-spending term. Weighting by impressions answers "what quality is the market actually seeing?", and it is the only version of the number we would put in front of a client.
Quality Score benchmarks by keyword type
Useful quality score benchmarks are segmented by keyword type, not by industry. Here is how we would expect a well-structured account to look.
| Keyword type | Expected range | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Brand terms | 8 to 10 | High expected CTR, exact intent match, own landing page. |
| Tight non-brand commercial ("emergency plumber sydney") | 6 to 8 | Strong intent, but competitive expected CTR. |
| Broad category terms ("marketing software") | 4 to 6 | Mixed intent behind the query drags ad relevance down. |
| Competitor terms | 2 to 4 | You cannot match the query with a relevant page. Expected by design. |
| Long-tail informational | Often "-" | Too few impressions to score. |
If a client's competitor conquesting keywords sit at 3/10, that is not a failure to fix. It is the structural cost of bidding on someone else's brand, and it should be explained that way in the report before they find it themselves.
Ready to stop rebuilding this analysis by hand every month? See how automated reporting works.
Why Quality Score matters less than it used to
Keyword-level Quality Score covers a shrinking share of most accounts' spend, and that is the single biggest change in how this metric should be treated in 2026.
Performance Max, Demand Gen and Shopping campaigns have no keywords, so they have no Quality Score at all. On the Search side, broad match paired with Smart Bidding means one keyword now stands in for a wide cloud of queries, so a single score against it is a blunter instrument than it was when everyone ran tight exact-match ad groups.
We are not saying ignore it. We are saying rank it below conversion tracking accuracy, search term hygiene and landing page speed on your optimisation list. A 6/10 keyword that converts at target cost per acquisition is doing its job. A 9/10 keyword that converts at three times target is not.
What still holds real value is the component breakdown rather than the composite. "Ad relevance: below average" across a whole ad group is a structural finding: the ad group is serving too many intents, and that is a fix you can make in an hour.
How to improve Quality Score
To improve quality score in Google Ads, work on the component that is flagged below average rather than the composite number. In practice that means five moves, in this order.
1. Tighten the ad group. If ad relevance is below average, split the ad group so each one carries a single intent with ads written for it. This is the fix with the highest hit rate, by a distance.
2. Mirror the query in the headline. Expected CTR responds to copy that uses the searcher's language. Pull the exact phrasing from your search terms report, not from the client's internal product naming.
3. Match the landing page to the promise. If the ad says "same-day delivery", the page needs that above the fold. Landing page experience also reflects mobile usability and load speed, so a page that meets Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds does double duty for paid and organic.
4. Prune, do not polish. Keywords with persistently low scores and low volume are rarely worth rescuing. Pausing a bloated tail of 2/10 keywords does more for account clarity than copy tests on them ever will.
5. Give it time. Quality Score updates on accumulated performance history, so changes take days to weeks to show, and they show first in the component ratings.
One thing to be blunt about: you cannot bid your way to a better Quality Score, and no agency can guarantee a specific score.
How to report Quality Score to clients
Report Quality Score as a trend with a plain-English explanation, never as a raw keyword-level export. A 400-row table of scores is the fastest way to get a client fixated on the one 2/10 keyword at the bottom.
We built ReportsMate email-first because, after years around agency reporting, the dashboards clients were handed almost never got logged into. The report that lands in the inbox is the one that gets read, and it is the one where you get to frame a number like Quality Score before the client interprets it on their own.
Our own platform data says something useful about cadence here. Of the report schedules currently switched on in ReportsMate, weekly and monthly deliveries each account for roughly four in ten, with daily sitting at about one in six. Quality Score belongs in the monthly rhythm. It moves slowly, and putting it in a daily email trains clients to react to noise.
Platform mix matters too: across the live client connections running on ReportsMate, Google Analytics 4 is the most connected source, with Meta Ads second and Google Ads third at roughly one in six connections. Most agencies are not reporting on Google Ads in isolation, which is why a keyword-level metric needs framing against the cross-channel picture.
Three practical rules we would apply:
- Report the impression-weighted score, segmented brand versus non-brand.
- Show the component ratings, not just the composite, so the client sees the diagnosis.
- Attach one sentence of interpretation. "Ad relevance improved after we split the ad groups in July" is reporting. A number in a cell is not.
Connected alongside GA4 and Search Console, the Google Ads integration pulls campaign performance into the same branded email, so quality signals sit next to the outcomes clients care about. Where the real conversation is efficiency, run the numbers first with our PPC ROI calculator.
Frequently asked questions
Q: What is a good Quality Score in Google Ads?
A: A good Quality Score is 7 or above on Google's 1 to 10 scale. Scores of 8 to 10 are strong and typically come from brand terms or tightly themed ad groups, 5 to 6 is average and worth reviewing if the keyword carries meaningful spend, and 4 or below usually indicates a mismatch between the keyword, the ad copy and the landing page. Context matters more than the digit: a 6 on a high-volume commercial term is more valuable than a 10 on a keyword nobody searches.
Q: What is the average quality score in Google Ads?
A: Google does not publish an official average Quality Score, so there is no authoritative figure to compare against. Third-party analyses of aggregated account data have generally put typical averages around the middle of the scale, but those samples vary widely by industry, account size and brand traffic share. The more useful comparison is against your own account over time, using an impression-weighted average and splitting brand from non-brand keywords.
Q: Does Quality Score directly lower my cost per click?
A: Not directly. Quality Score is a diagnostic reported daily, while the auction uses Ad Rank, which Google describes as combining your bid, auction-time ad quality, Ad Rank thresholds, the context of the search, and the expected impact of assets and ad formats. The same quality signals feed both, so improving genuine relevance often does reduce what you pay, but you can raise a reported Quality Score without seeing a CPC change. Judge the work by cost per acquisition. Our post on what a good CTR looks like in Google Ads covers the related click-side metric.
Q: Why do some of my keywords show a dash instead of a Quality Score?
A: A dash means the keyword has not accumulated enough exact-match impression history for Google to assign a score. This is normal for new keywords, seasonal terms and long-tail phrases with low volume. It is not a tracking error and it does not mean the keyword is performing badly. Exclude those rows from any account average, because counting them as zeros drags your reported figure down for no reason. A keyword that stays blank for months is a volume signal, not a quality one.
Q: Does Quality Score apply to Performance Max or Shopping campaigns?
A: No. Quality Score is a keyword-level metric that exists only in Search campaigns. Performance Max, Demand Gen and Display have no keywords, and Shopping is driven by product data, so none of them report a Quality Score. If a growing share of a client's budget sits in Performance Max, keyword-level Quality Score covers less of their account each quarter. For those campaigns, quality shows up through asset performance ratings and product feed quality instead.
Q: How long does it take to improve Quality Score?
A: Expect days to weeks, not hours. Quality Score is recalculated on accumulated performance history, so a change to ad copy or landing pages needs enough new impressions and clicks before it is reflected. The component ratings usually shift before the composite number does, which is why we watch expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience rather than refreshing the 1 to 10 column.
Q: Should Quality Score be a KPI in a client report?
A: No. Treat it as a diagnostic that supports the KPIs, not as a KPI in its own right. Campaigns should be judged on cost per acquisition, return on ad spend and lead quality, with Quality Score appearing as context when it explains a movement in those numbers. Putting it on the headline summary invites clients to optimise for the wrong thing. Our Google Ads reporting best practices for agencies covers how to structure that hierarchy.
Final tips
So, what is a good quality score in Google Ads? Seven or above, weighted by impressions, split brand from non-brand, and read alongside the three component ratings rather than on its own. Anything below 5 on a keyword with real spend deserves 20 minutes of attention. Anything below 5 on a keyword with 40 impressions deserves none.
The bigger point for agencies is framing. Quality Score is the kind of metric clients find on their own, misinterpret, and email you about on a Sunday. Getting ahead of it in a clear monthly report is cheaper than explaining it reactively, every time.
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