Every account we audit has the same line in the diagnostics: "Average Quality Score 4 / 10." Owners shrug. Their last agency told them Quality Score didn't matter anymore — Performance Max runs the show, the algorithm sorts it out, you can't see keyword-level data anyway, etc.
Half of that is true. The other half is costing them 30% on every click.
The thing the dashboard hides
Quality Score is still a 1–10 number Google calculates for every keyword in your search campaigns. It still has three components: expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Google still factors it into the auction. None of that changed when Performance Max launched.
What changed is that Performance Max doesn't show it to you. So if your spend has shifted into PMax, you naturally stop thinking about it. The campaigns that do surface it — your standard search campaigns — get less attention because they're a smaller piece of the budget.
But here's the catch: search is where the hand-raisers live. The person typing "emergency plumber Manhattan Beach" is closer to a phone call than the person scrolling through a YouTube pre-roll. Cleaning up Quality Score on those campaigns moves more pipeline than another round of PMax asset experiments.
What we actually do
We follow the same pattern on every account.
1. Find the keywords burning money
We sort by spend, descending. We look at the top 20 keywords by cost. We check their Quality Score. If a keyword has spent more than $500 this quarter at a Quality Score of 5 or below, it goes on the list.
This is usually 3–8 keywords. They're the ones distorting the average.
2. Decide why each one is bad
Quality Score is a diagnostic, not a verdict. We open each keyword and look at the three component grades.
- Below average expected CTR: the ad isn't compelling, or the keyword is too broad. Often both.
- Below average ad relevance: the keyword isn't in the ad's headline or description.
- Below average landing page experience: the page is slow, doesn't mention the keyword, or doesn't load the right content.
You can fix all three. You can't fix them by yelling at the algorithm.
3. Rebuild the ad group around the keyword
If the keyword is genuinely valuable, we promote it into its own ad group. New responsive search ad with the keyword in two of the headlines. New ad extensions. Pinned position 1 headline if the match type is exact.
Most accounts we touch have ad groups with 40 keywords sharing one ad. Of course relevance is bad. Tighten it.
4. Check the landing page
Half the time the issue is the landing page. The keyword is "AC repair Long Beach" and the click goes to the homepage, which mentions HVAC services in five cities. Page experience score is 4. CTR is fine, ad copy is fine, but the page doesn't deserve the click.
This is where Pixel Pages earns its keep — every priority keyword gets a dedicated page that loads under a second and mentions the city by name. We've moved Quality Score from 5 to 8 on plumbing accounts in two weeks just by doing this.
What you'll see if it works
Three things move when Quality Score climbs.
- Average CPC drops. This is the obvious one. Two clicks for the price of one is a real outcome.
- Impression share goes up. The same budget shows your ad more often, because Google's auction rewards relevance with reach.
- Lead quality improves. The clicks you get are people who saw an ad that matched their query and a page that matched the ad. Less mismatch, fewer bounces, more calls.
We've moved accounts from a 4.2 average to a 7.8 average over a quarter. The CPCs dropped 31%. Lead volume on the same budget went up 44%. Nobody high-fived the algorithm — we just made the ads and pages match the keywords.
When it doesn't move
Two situations where Quality Score stays stuck.
The first is when the business genuinely shouldn't be running on a keyword. If you're a roofing company bidding on "roofing" with no geographic modifier, you're competing with national brands and your relevance will always lag. Narrow the keyword.
The second is when the landing page is hosted somewhere you can't fix. WordPress with a half-broken plugin stack, page speed of 38 on mobile, three popups. Quality Score reflects reality. You have to fix the page.
The point
Performance Max didn't make Quality Score irrelevant. It just made it easier to ignore. Pull up the report tomorrow morning. Look at the keywords spending the most. If their Quality Score is 5 or below, you've found the next two weeks of work — and probably the next two weeks of margin.