Google Ads Quality Score Low? How to Improve It

Expected CTR is Google’s prediction of how likely your ad is to be clicked when shown for a specific search query. It is benchmarked against other advertisers showing for the same exact queries. Below average means Google expects your ad to receive fewer clicks than competitors — not that your historical CTR is low, but that it is predicted to be. That prediction is weighted by your account’s own click history on the keyword: a keyword with a poor historical record carries that footprint even after you improve the copy, and needs both better ads and time for the score to reset.

The most direct lever is your ad copy. Headlines that reflect the searched query raise click prediction because they signal relevance to the user. Generic headlines — “Marketing Agency London”, “Quality Products Online” — match no specific intent and score poorly against competitors who have written to the exact query.

Fix: Rewrite Headline 1 in your Responsive Search Ads to directly reflect the query intent. Use a call-to-action that matches what the searcher wants to do (“Get a Quote” for service intent, “Shop Now” for transactional, “See How It Works” for informational). Add negative keywords to exclude queries where a click is unlikely — irrelevant impressions weaken expected CTR signals because the keyword accumulates a history of low-click auctions against those queries. Run regular search term audits and exclude irrelevant match expansions before they accumulate.

Ad Relevance measures how closely your ad matches the intent behind the search query. It scores poorly when there is a gap between what someone searched for and what your ad says. The most common cause is ad group structure: too many keywords with different intents forced into the same group, served by the same set of ads.

If your ad group contains “buy running shoes”, “are running shoes good for hiking”, and “running shoe care tips”, no single set of ads can be highly relevant to all three. The commercial buyer, the curious researcher, and the existing owner are different audiences with different intents.

Fix: Group keywords with near-identical intent into the same ad group — 5 to 15 closely related terms is a workable target. The headline in your RSA should address the intent shared by all keywords in that group. For high-value exact match keywords with significant impression volume and competitive CPCs, a dedicated ad group gives you full control over the message. The underlying principle is that tight groupings make it possible to write genuinely relevant ads; loose groupings make it structurally impossible.

Landing Page Experience reflects how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad. Google’s crawlers assess the page for usefulness of content, ease of navigation, and whether it delivers on what the ad promised. A poor rating here almost always means one of three things: the page is too generic for the query, it loads too slowly, or it performs poorly on mobile.

Sending paid traffic to a homepage is the most common structural mistake. The homepage serves too many audiences and too many goals. The user who clicked an ad for “emergency boiler repair London” does not want to navigate through a services menu. A dedicated landing page with a single message and a single conversion action is the correct structure — and it performs better on this component because it unambiguously matches the ad.

Fix: Match the landing page to the specific ad. The primary keyword should appear in the H1. The offer or service promised in the ad should be the first thing visible on the page. Use PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) to check mobile performance — Google assesses mobile and desktop separately, so a fast desktop page does not compensate for a slow mobile one. For lead generation pages, put the form or call-to-action above the fold on a 375px screen. The page must load quickly, deliver on the ad’s promise, and make the next action obvious. For a full audit of message match, CTA strength and mobile speed scoring, run the free landing page audit.