The 3 quality score components: CTR, ad relevance and landing page

Your quality score in Google Ads is not a secret number Google hands out at random. It is the sum of three concrete components, and you can look at and improve each one separately. Anyone who understands what the score is made of stops guessing and starts working precisely where things actually go wrong.

This page is your starting point. We put the three components side by side, explain what they measure and link through to the deep dive on each one. Do you first want to know where the score comes from and why it determines your cost per click? Read the basics in what is quality score in Google Ads. Do you want to see how all three work together in the bigger picture of paid search? You will find that in our pillar on what is SEA.

Why Google splits the score into three

Google only wants to check one thing: does the searcher get a relevant answer when they click on your ad? That is hard to measure with a single number, so Google splits the question into three moments of the journey.

Before the click: is your ad attractive enough to click on? During the click: does your ad match what someone typed in? After the click: does your landing page deliver on the promise of the ad? Those three moments form the three components. Together they give Google a reliable picture of how well your whole setup fits together.

The nice thing about that split: it tells you exactly where your work lies. A low score is never a mystery. One of the three components is rated “below average”, and that is where you start.

Component 1: expected CTR

Expected click-through rate is Google’s estimate of the chance that someone clicks on your ad when it appears for a given keyword. Note the word “expected”: it is not about your historical CTR alone, but about what Google thinks your ad will do, corrected for position.

This component essentially measures the pulling power of your ad copy. Does your headline speak to the searcher? Does your promise match their intent? Do you give a reason to click on you instead of on the three competitors below you?

Expected CTR is often the component with the biggest leverage, because stronger ad copy immediately delivers more clicks too. You improve two things at once. In increase your Google Ads CTR you will find five concrete techniques to sharpen your B2B ad copy, from using your keyword in the headline to putting ad extensions to work.

Component 2: ad relevance

Ad relevance measures how well your ad copy matches the meaning of the keyword. Unlike expected CTR, this is not about pulling power but about semantic match. If someone searches for “accounting software for freelancers” and your ad is about “outsourced bookkeeping”, the intent does not line up, no matter how good your copy is.

This is usually a structural problem, not a copy problem. If you dump twenty unrelated keywords into one ad group, it is impossible to write a single ad that is relevant to all of them. The solution lies in how you build your account: group keywords that share the same intent, and write ads per group that hit that one theme.

That way ad relevance almost takes care of itself. Every ad group has a tight theme, you use the keyword literally in your headline, and the match between question and answer is visible to Google. If you are wrestling with an account where everything runs together, restructuring it is often the work where an experienced outsource Google Ads partner gets returns the fastest.

Component 3: landing page experience

The third component looks at what happens after the click. Landing page experience judges whether the page your ad sends people to is useful, relevant and usable for whoever lands there. Google looks at things like how well the content connects to your ad, the loading speed and how easy the page is to use on mobile.

This is the component that gets underestimated most often. Advertisers pour all their energy into keywords and copy, and then send the traffic to their homepage. There, the visitor still has to figure out where to go, and that costs you points with Google and conversions for yourself.

The rule of thumb: every campaign deserves a page that literally delivers on the promise of the ad and offers one clear next step. Why you are better off not using a homepage for that, and how to build such a page, we explain in paid traffic to a landing page.

How the three work together

The trap is to see the components as separate dials. They hang together. Sharp ad copy (CTR) that does not match the keyword (relevance) attracts the wrong clicks. A perfectly aligned ad that leads to a slow, generic page (landing page) burns your budget after the click.

The common thread through all three is alignment: keyword, ad and page have to be about the same thing. Whoever keeps that chain tight scores on all three components at once. Do you want to tackle all three systematically instead of one by one? Read our approach in improve your Google Ads quality score.

And do not forget the stakes: a higher quality score lowers your cost per click. Every component you strengthen pays for itself in a lower cost per lead. That is exactly why we do not treat paid search as a set of standalone campaigns, but as the fast-acquisition layer of one growth engine: ads that buy pipeline, not clicks. With offline conversions and lead-to-deal attribution we measure whether that lower cost per lead really turns into deals.

Getting started

Start by checking which of the three components is rated “below average” for your keywords. That is your starting point. Then work through the matching deep-dive page and align keyword, ad and page with each other.

Would you like someone experienced to look at the structure of your account and straighten out all three components in one go? Get in touch and we will look together at where your biggest leverage lies.