Quality Score.

The Quality Score is a Google Ads metric that indicates, on a scale from 1 to 10, how relevant and how high quality Google considers a keyword together with its advert and landing page. It is a diagnostic signal rather than a lever you pull directly: it shows how well your campaign is set up compared with other advertisers bidding on the same keyword. Treat it as a thermometer — useful for finding the problem, useless as a target in itself.

Three components feed into it: the expected click-through rate (how likely the advert is to be clicked), ad relevance (how well the advert matches the search term) and the landing page experience (relevance, transparency, load time, mobile usability). Each is rated 'below average', 'average' or 'above average' in the interface, and those three words tell you exactly where to start. A below-average landing page experience is almost always the most expensive of the three to leave alone.

The Quality Score matters commercially because it feeds directly into Ad Rank — which decides whether and where an advert appears and how much a click costs. A high score can secure the same ad position at a considerably lower cost per click; a low one makes every click dearer or stops delivery altogether. Good ad copy, tightly themed ad groups and relevant, fast landing pages are what raise the score in practice.

An example: two advertisers bid on the same keyword. Whoever has the more relevant advert and the better-matched landing page earns the higher Quality Score — and can appear above the competitor despite a lower bid, while paying less per click. Quality simply beats budget here. For a Swiss SME with a modest monthly budget, that is often the difference between competing at all and being priced out of the auction.