Quality Score: the rule and the reality
Ad Grants does not allow keywords with a Quality Score below 3. What the policy does not say is that most keywords never get a score in the first place.
Oskar SznajderCo-founder Webup!
October 17, 2026 · 4 min read
Two things are true here and they pull in opposite directions, so it is worth separating them.
The rule
- Below 3 is not allowed. Keywords with a Quality Score under 3 have to be removed or paused. They do not serve anyway, and they count against the account.
- Between 3 and 7 is a signal to check the page. A mid-range score usually means the landing page is loosely related to the keyword rather than clearly about it. That is a page problem, not a bidding problem.
The reality
When we tried to read Quality Score across the whole keyword portfolio of 706 accounts, we found that Google does not issue one for 97.5% of keywords. The score exists only for the handful of phrases that already have traffic — enough impressions and clicks for Google to have an opinion.
That makes Quality Score a consequence of having traffic, not a route to it. An account where almost nothing serves has almost no scores to improve. Setting "raise the Quality Score" as a goal, or holding an agency to it as a KPI, measures something that only appears after the real work has already paid off.
What to do with the mid-range scores
Treat a score of 3–7 as a pointer to one specific question: does the page this keyword points at actually answer it? Across 75,720 phrase → page pairs we rated for topic relevance, the pattern is clear:
| Page title | Keywords that start producing impressions | Google rating "above average" |
|---|---|---|
| Has the phrase literally and is on topic | 33.5% | 12% |
| On topic, but without the phrase | 15.5% | 9% |
| Has the phrase, but is not on topic | 15.7% | 0% |
| Neither on topic nor with the phrase | 9.5% | 4% |
Note the third row. A phrase in the title of a page about something else gives the same result as no phrase at all, and not a single "above average" rating across 108 cases. Relevance is the entry condition; the phrase in the title is the amplifier. The amplifier gives more, but without entry it amplifies nothing.
So for every keyword sitting at 3–7: first check whether the page answers it. If it does, put the phrase in the title and the H1. If it does not, the keyword needs a different page — or a new one.
See your keywords by Quality Score
PING.NGO lists keywords below 3 and the ones between 3 and 7 together with the page each points at.
