Google Ads Quality Score sits quietly in your account dashboard, but it decides whether you're paying $2 or $6 for the same click. Here's the exact process to lift it, step by step, without touching your budget.
- Quality Score is rated 1-10 across expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience — fix all three, not just one.
- Splitting broad ad groups into single-theme groups of 5-15 keywords is the single biggest lever for small business accounts in 2026.
- Landing page speed and content match matter as much as ad copy — a slow or generic page caps your score regardless of CTR.
- Review Quality Score every 2 weeks, not daily — Google needs volume before the score stabilises.
- Skip broad match on unproven keywords until Quality Score for that theme sits at 7 or higher.
Why this matters
Quality Score isn't vanity metric. It's Google's shorthand for how relevant your ad and landing page are to the search, and it directly multiplies or discounts what you pay per click.
Two advertisers bidding on the same keyword with the same maximum bid can land completely different actual costs because one has a Quality Score of 8 and the other sits at 4. For a small business running a few thousand dollars a month through Google Ads, that gap is the difference between a campaign that pays for itself and one that quietly bleeds budget.
Most small business accounts checked in 2026 have never had their Quality Score audited past the first campaign setup. That's the gap this guide closes.
What you'll need
- An active Google Ads account with at least 4-6 weeks of running history and real click volume
- Access to the Quality Score columns (Modify columns > Quality Score, plus the three sub-metrics)
- Landing pages you can actually edit — not just a single homepage funnelling every ad
- 30-60 minutes to run the audit properly
- A simple spreadsheet to track scores by ad group over time
If your account is brand new and running through Ramp Up Digital or another agency's initial setup phase, expect Quality Score columns to show "unavailable" until Google has enough impression data — that's normal, not a red flag.
The steps
Step 1: Pull Quality Score data for every active keyword
Go to Keywords, then Modify columns, and add Quality Score plus the three sub-scores: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. This tells you which lever is actually broken instead of guessing.
Sort by Quality Score ascending. Anything sitting at 1-4 in 2026 is costing you real money on every click and needs attention first.
Common mistake: looking only at the headline Quality Score number and ignoring the three components. A score of 5 with "Below average" landing page experience needs a completely different fix than a 5 with "Below average" expected CTR.
Step 2: Split broad ad groups into single-theme groups
An ad group covering "plumber," "emergency plumber," and "blocked drain" together forces one generic ad to try to serve three different search intents. Split each theme into its own ad group with 5-15 tightly related keywords.
This is the single fastest way to lift Ad Relevance because your headline can now match the exact phrase someone typed. A business running Google Ads for tradies sees this play out constantly — "blocked drain repair" deserves its own group, its own headline, its own landing page section.
Common mistake: cramming 30+ keywords into one ad group to "save time." It saves setup time and costs you Quality Score for the life of the campaign.
Step 3: Rewrite ad copy to mirror the keyword
Put the keyword's exact language in Headline 1 wherever it fits naturally. If the ad group targets "emergency electrician Newcastle," that phrase — or something very close to it — belongs in the headline, not buried in description line two.
Expected CTR improves fastest when the searcher sees their own words reflected back at them within the first three seconds of scanning results.
Step 4: Fix landing page relevance and speed
Each ad group should send traffic to a page whose content actually matches the keyword theme, not a generic homepage. If someone searches "blocked drain repair" and lands on a services page listing twelve unrelated trades, Landing Page Experience drops.
Check load speed too — a page that takes more than a few seconds to load on mobile pulls this sub-score down regardless of content quality. For businesses rebuilding pages around this, choosing a Google Ads agency that also handles landing page structure saves the back-and-forth between ad copy and web changes.
Expected outcome: Landing Page Experience shifting from "Below average" to "Average" or "Above average" within 2-4 weeks of the page going live.
Step 5: Add negative keywords weekly
Run the Search Terms report every week for the first month, then fortnightly after that. Any search term triggering your ad without matching intent — someone searching "how to fix a blocked drain myself" when you're a paid plumber — gets added as a negative.
This protects Expected CTR by stopping your ad from showing to people who were never going to click, which drags the average down over time.
Step 6: Test ad assets to lift expected CTR
Add sitelinks, callout assets, and structured snippets relevant to each ad group's theme. A tradie ad group can use sitelinks like "Same-Day Service" or "Free Quotes" — assets that increase real estate on the results page and lift click-through rate without changing the core message.
More ad real estate typically means more clicks for the same position, and Google's Expected CTR calculation responds to that.
Step 7: Review every two weeks, not daily
Quality Score needs volume to stabilise — checking daily and panic-editing based on small sample sizes does more harm than good. Set a fortnightly review cadence, track the number in your spreadsheet, and only make structural changes (splitting groups, rewriting ads) when a pattern holds across at least 100-200 impressions per keyword.
Troubleshooting
Quality Score stuck at 3-5 despite decent click-through rate: check Landing Page Experience specifically — a fast, relevant ad can still be dragged down by a slow or mismatched page.
"Unavailable" showing instead of a score: the keyword hasn't accumulated enough impressions yet. This is common for new accounts or newly split ad groups in the first few weeks of 2026 campaigns — wait for volume before judging.
One keyword tanking the whole ad group's average: pause or isolate it into its own group rather than letting it drag down keywords that were performing fine.
Broad match keywords showing "Below average" relevance: tighten to phrase or exact match once you've identified which broad variations actually convert.
Local service businesses with thin location pages: a generic "Services" page rarely satisfies Landing Page Experience for location-specific searches — build out content that actually names the suburb or service area.
Quality Score improving but cost-per-click not moving: check your bid strategy — automated bidding sometimes takes a week or two to recalculate after a Quality Score shift.
Tools and resources
- Google Ads' native Quality Score columns and Search Terms report — the two you'll use most
- A landing page speed checker to catch slow-loading pages before they cap your score
- Budgeting for Google Ads if Quality Score improvements are freeing up spend you now need to reallocate
- A shared spreadsheet tracking Quality Score by ad group across each fortnightly review
What to do next
Once Quality Score sits at 7 or above across your core ad groups, shift attention to bid strategy and budget allocation — that's where the savings from a higher score actually compound. If the audit above surfaced more structural issues than time allows to fix solo, that's the point where handing the account to a specialist agency for a proper rebuild makes more sense than another weekend of manual edits.
FAQ
What is a good Google Ads Quality Score in 2026?
A Quality Score of 7 or higher is considered strong in 2026, with 8-10 reserved for highly relevant, well-optimised ad groups. Scores of 1-4 typically mean a structural problem with ad relevance or landing page match, not just bidding.
How long does it take to improve Quality Score?
Most small business accounts see measurable movement within 2-4 weeks of restructuring ad groups and fixing landing pages. Quality Score needs consistent impression volume to recalculate, so daily checks won’t show real change.
Does Quality Score affect ad ranking directly?
Quality Score itself isn’t the ranking factor, but its three underlying components — expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience — feed directly into Ad Rank alongside your bid. Improving them lowers your effective cost per click for the same position.
Can a new Google Ads account have a high Quality Score?
New accounts often show "unavailable" for the first few weeks because Google hasn’t gathered enough impression data. Once volume builds, tightly themed ad groups with matching landing pages can reach a 7 or higher within the first month.
Why is my landing page experience rated below average?
Below average landing page experience usually means the page content doesn’t clearly match the keyword’s intent, or the page loads too slowly on mobile. Rebuilding the page around the specific service or product the keyword targets typically resolves it.
Should I pause keywords with low Quality Score?
Pause only if the keyword is also underperforming on conversions after you’ve tried restructuring the ad group and landing page. A low score alone doesn’t mean the keyword is worthless — it means it’s costing more per click than it should.
Does Quality Score apply to Facebook and Meta ads too?
No, Quality Score is specific to Google Ads. Meta uses a comparable but separate relevance diagnostics system, so the fixes described here for Google Ads don’t transfer directly.
One last thing
The fastest Quality Score win most small businesses skip isn't in the ad copy at all — it's deleting the ad group that covers five unrelated services on one landing page. Splitting that single group into five tightly themed ones, each with its own headline and its own page section, moves the needle faster than any bid adjustment in 2026.
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