What actually moves it, and how a higher score cuts your cost per click on the same budget.
Quality Score is often treated as a mysterious grade. It is closer to a discount: Google charges you less for the same position when your ad is more relevant than the alternative.
The three inputs that matter
Expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Of the three, expected click-through rate carries the most weight, which means the wording of the ad against the searched term moves the number faster than anything you do on the site.
Tight themes beat clever copy
A score is calculated per keyword, so an ad group covering fifteen loosely related keywords will be mediocre for all of them. Splitting into small groups where the ad can echo the exact search phrase is the single most reliable improvement available.
Landing page experience is not design quality
It measures whether the page delivers what the ad promised, loads quickly on mobile, and is navigable. A beautiful page that makes the visitor hunt for the offer they clicked scores badly. A plain page that answers immediately scores well.
The payoff compounds: a higher score lowers cost per click, which buys more clicks on the same budget, which produces more data to optimise with. That is why it is worth attention even when campaigns are already profitable.
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