Lesser Known AdWords Quality Score Facts

Jul 23, 2013 - 9:06 am 9 by
Filed Under Google Ads

AdWords Quality ScoreJuliana S., a Google AdWords representative, posted a topic in the Google AdWords Help forum named "uncovering quality score."

In her post, she shares some of the "less frequently known" facts about the Google AdWords quality score.

The quality score is a large part on what makes an ad rank in Google's search ad system.

Here is the list of these lesser known facts:

  • You won’t automatically get a high quality score from keyword stuffing. Some things to keep in mind are the following: is the content of your ad prominent on your site and not buried, do you feature original content, and is your business model clear?
  • Only exact match keyword data on Google Search is used to determine a keyword’s quality score. This means clicks happening on phrase or broad match keywords do not factor into QS.
  • The quality rating (1-10) given to keywords is reflective of its performance with all text ads in an ad group. Getting rid of poor performing ads is a good strategy as one low performing ad can lower the overall quality score of a keyword.
  • Quality score of zero impression keywords have no effect on quality score as they have no impression data. Also, we do normalize quality score by position (i.e. we don’t expect CTR to be as high in position 11 versus 2).
  • Lastly, you should keep in mind to there needs to be a statistically significant set of data to calculate quality score. This means one day of terrible or great performance will not necessarily ruin or help your QS.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Ads

Google Ads Tests Serving Search Ads With Restrictive Match Types In AI Mode

Sep 4, 2026 - 2:50 pm
Google

Google Job Search Not Showing New Jobs?

Sep 4, 2026 - 11:12 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 4, 2026

Sep 4, 2026 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Ad Tech Monopoly Won’t Be Broken Up, AI Mode Takes Over, Gemini Not Citing, AdSense Impression Changes & Bugs

Sep 4, 2026 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profiles Submit A Business Photo For Verification

Sep 4, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Expands Waze Ads Beyond The United States

Sep 4, 2026 - 7:41 am
Previous Story: Can You Redirect A Google Penalty? Probably.