Earlier this month, PPC consultant Heather Robinson published a widely-shared breakdown of a £50 ad spend that ended up costing an advertiser closer to £1,000 once wasted impressions, poor landing pages, and a Quality Score of 3/10 were factored in. The story went viral in paid search circles for a reason: it perfectly illustrates how one overlooked metric — Quality Score — silently inflates costs across almost every underperforming Google Ads account we audit.
With Google now funnelling billions of clicks per week through AI Search features, Top Stories rolling into AI Overviews, and Demand Gen campaigns pulling in business data feeds, the auction is getting more crowded and more expensive. Quality Score is one of the few levers you fully control. This guide walks through how it's calculated, how to diagnose weaknesses, and the exact playbook we use at Omakaase to lift accounts from a QS of 4 to 8+.
What Google Ads Quality Score Actually Measures
Quality Score is a 1–10 diagnostic Google assigns to each keyword in your account, based on how relevant your ad and landing page are to the searcher's intent. It's not used directly in the auction — instead, Google calculates a real-time Ad Rank using expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience, and Quality Score reflects those same three components on a historical basis.
The three sub-components each get a rating of Below Average, Average, or Above Average:
- Expected click-through rate (CTR): How likely your ad is to be clicked when shown for that keyword, normalised for position.
- Ad relevance: How closely your ad copy matches the intent behind the keyword.
- Landing page experience: Relevance, transparency, load speed, and mobile usability of the destination page.
A rough working formula the Omakaase team uses to estimate Quality Score internally is: QS ≈ 1 + (Expected CTR score) + (Ad Relevance score) + (Landing Page score), where each component contributes roughly 0 (Below Average), 1.5 (Average), or 2–3 (Above Average). It's not Google's official maths, but it maps closely to what we see in the field.
How to Find and Calculate Your Quality Score
In the Google Ads UI, navigate to Campaigns → Audiences, keywords, and content → Search keywords, then click the columns icon and add: Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad relevance, and Landing page experience. Also add the historical variants (Qual. Score (hist.), etc.) if you want trend data.
To calculate an account-level Quality Score — which is what really moves CPCs — do this:
- Export all active keywords with impressions in the last 30 days.
- Weight each keyword's QS by its impression share.
- Sum the weighted scores. That's your true account QS.
Most advertisers we audit sit between 5.2 and 6.4 on this weighted basis. Above 7.5 is where CPC savings start compounding meaningfully — Google's own data suggests a QS of 10 pays roughly 50% less per click than a QS of 5 for the same position.
The CPC Impact — In Real Numbers
Using Google's public Ad Rank formula, if your max CPC is £4.00 and your QS is 4, you might pay £3.20 per click for position 2. Push that same keyword to a QS of 8 and you often pay £1.60 for the same position. On 5,000 clicks a month, that's £8,000 saved — the exact dynamic behind Robinson's £50-to-£1,000 case.
The 5-Step Playbook to Improve Quality Score
1. Restructure into Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) or Tight Themes
The single biggest lever is granularity. If one ad group targets "emergency plumber London" and "boiler repair London," your ad copy can't be equally relevant to both. Break them apart. In 2026, with broad match dominating, we recommend Tight Theme Ad Groups (TTAGs) — 3–7 closely related keywords per ad group, each with dedicated RSAs.
2. Rewrite Responsive Search Ads for Relevance
Include the exact keyword phrase in at least two headlines. Use one headline for the unique value proposition, one for a proof point (reviews, guarantees), and one for a CTA. Pin sparingly — Google's machine learning needs room to test. Aim for "Excellent" or "Good" Ad Strength, but don't obsess over it; ad relevance in the QS diagnostic matters more.
3. Fix Landing Page Experience
This is where most accounts leak Quality Score. The landing page must: mirror the ad's headline, load in under 2.5 seconds on mobile, have a clear single CTA, and include trust signals. Send "boiler repair London" traffic to a boiler repair London page — not your homepage. Our PPC landing page guide covers the full checklist.
4. Improve Expected CTR With Ad Extensions and Copy Testing
Every extension you add — sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, images, lead forms — increases ad real estate and click probability. Accounts running all eligible extensions typically see 10–15% higher CTR. Test emotional vs. rational hooks in headlines; test question-based headlines against declarative ones.
5. Prune Ruthlessly
Any keyword with a QS of 4 or below and less than 30% impression share is costing you money on every other keyword in the account, because Google's Ad Rank thresholds are influenced by account history. Pause, don't just lower bids. We often pause 20–30% of keywords in an initial audit.
Case Study: London-Based B2B SaaS, QS Lifted From 4.8 to 8.1
A B2B workflow-automation SaaS came to us in Q1 2026 spending £42,000/month on Google Ads with a blended CPA of £680 — well above their £320 target. Their account-weighted Quality Score was 4.8.
We ran a three-week restructure: consolidated 340 keywords into 62 tight-theme ad groups, rewrote all RSAs to include exact-match phrases in headlines, built six new landing pages (one per persona-solution combination) with sub-2-second load times, and paused 87 keywords with QS ≤ 3.
After 60 days: weighted QS rose to 8.1, average CPC dropped 41%, CTR increased from 3.2% to 7.8%, and CPA fell to £287 — beating target. Total spend held steady, but qualified demo bookings increased by 118%. The £42k budget was suddenly performing like a £72k budget.
What Most Businesses Get Wrong About Quality Score
- Chasing 10/10 on every keyword. A QS of 7–8 with high volume is worth more than a QS of 10 on a keyword nobody searches. Focus on the top 20% of keywords by impressions.
- Ignoring landing page experience because "the site is fine." Google measures the specific URL your ad points to, not your site as a whole. A slow, generic homepage will crater QS every time.
- Blaming Quality Score for high CPCs when the auction itself is expensive. Legal, insurance, and finance verticals have £30+ baseline CPCs. QS still helps, but expectations need calibrating.
- Treating QS as static. It's recalculated with every auction. A change today shows up in 7–14 days of data — not overnight.
- Neglecting negative keywords. Irrelevant impressions tank expected CTR. A tight negative list is a QS lever most accounts under-use.
- Optimising for Ad Strength instead of QS. Ad Strength is a UI hint, not an auction input. Quality Score is what actually moves your CPC.
Where Quality Score Fits in Your Broader Paid Strategy
Quality Score improvements compound. A 2-point lift on your top 20 keywords typically pays back within 30 days, and every subsequent optimisation — bid strategy changes, audience layering, Performance Max asset refreshes — performs better on top of a healthy QS foundation.
If you're weighing where to invest first, see our breakdown of Google Ads vs SEO and our guide to choosing between SEO and PPC. For accounts already running paid, our PPC management guide and Google Ads mistakes post cover adjacent optimisations.
Ready to Audit Your Quality Score?
Most accounts leave 30–50% of their budget on the table because of Quality Score issues that take weeks — not months — to fix. If you'd like our team to run a full diagnostic on your account and build a restructure plan, start with our proposal builder. You'll get a Quality Score audit, a CPC savings estimate, and a restructure roadmap within five working days.