Honestly, it drives me nuts how everyone obsesses over their Google Ads Quality Score. I'll be straight — most people are looking at it completely wrong. They treat it like some final exam grade to chase. It's not. Think of it as a symptom, a quick health check for your whole ad setup.
Google Ads Quality Score is simply Google's 1-to-10 rating of how good and relevant your ads and keywords are. It's figured out from your Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR), Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. A high score gets you lower click costs and better ad positions. Simple as that.
TL;DR
Your Quality Score is a diagnostic tool, not a goal in itself. Fix the underlying problems (relevance, landing page) and the score will follow.
For Ahmedabad businesses, localizing ad copy and landing pages is the fastest way to boost relevance and score.
Mobile landing page speed is non-negotiable in 2026. A 2-second delay can kill your Quality Score.
Focus on tightly-themed ad groups. Don't lump 'wedding photography' and 'corporate photography' together.
A high Quality Score directly reduces your Cost Per Click (CPC). It's a direct path to a better ROI.
Quick Stats
The top ad position on Google gets an average CTR of 31.7%. A high Quality Score helps you get there cheaper. (Source: Backlinko, 2025)
Improving Quality Score from 5/10 to 8/10 can decrease your CPC by up to 40%. (Source: WordStream Analysis, 2025)
Over 55% of all website traffic comes from mobile phones. If your landing page isn't mobile-perfect, your score suffers. (Source: Statista, 2026)
On this page
- Why Ahmedabad SMBs Should Really, Really Care
- How We Juice Up the Expected CTR
- Nailing Ad Relevance for the Gujarat Market
- The Pillar Everyone Messes Up: Landing Page Experience
- High vs. Low Score: Here's What It Actually Costs You
- What Other Guides on Quality Score Don't Tell You
- Quick Story: A Bodakdev D2C Brand We Helped
- Your Action Plan: A Checklist for a Better Score
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Ahmedabad SMBs Should Really, Really Care
Look, the Ahmedabad market is packed. It doesn't matter if you're a real estate developer on SG Highway, a cool cafe in Bodakdev, or a D2C brand running out of a warehouse in Narol. You are fighting for every click. A low Quality Score is like trying to run a marathon with a sack of bricks on your back. It’s just dumb.
It means you pay more than your competitors for the exact same ad spot. Sach mein, it's that simple. If your score is a 4/10 and the guy next door has an 8/10, they could be paying 30-50% less for every single click. Just think about what you could do with that extra cash.
The Three Pillars: Let's Get Real
Google isn't some black box. They literally tell you what they care about. The problem is, most people just don't listen. It comes down to three things:
Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR): Is your ad interesting enough that people will actually click it?
Ad Relevance: Does your ad make sense for the keyword someone just typed in?
Landing Page Experience: After they click, does your page deliver what the ad promised? Is it fast? Easy to use on a phone?
Here at ClickMaking, my PPC team lives and breathes this stuff. We don't even bring up the 1-10 score in our Monday meetings. We talk about these three pillars. You fix them, the score fixes itself.
How We Juice Up the Expected CTR
Expected CTR is just Google’s prediction of whether your ad will get clicked. Lame, boring ads don't get clicks, and Google doesn't want to show ads that nobody clicks on. It makes their search results look bad.
Hyper-Specific Ad Groups
This is the number one mistake I see Ahmedabad businesses make, and yeah, it drives me up the wall. They’ll create one ad group for 'jewellery shop' and stuff it with keywords like 'gold rings', 'diamond necklace', and 'silver earrings'. This is a total disaster for your relevance and CTR.
Someone searching for '24k gold mangalsutra designs' needs an ad that practically screams '24k Gold Mangalsutras Here!', not some generic 'Best Jewellery in Maninagar' ad. We build super-tight ad groups—sometimes with just a single keyword—to make sure the ad is a perfect match for the search.
Ad Copy That Doesn't Suck
Your ad copy has to cut through the noise. We test everything. A/B testing isn't optional. I might use AI for some quick ideas, but our team sharpens them into something that works. We test things like:
Putting the price right in the headline ('Flats in Bopal Starting ₹45 Lakh').
Using local terms when it fits ('Get Your 'Pako' Deal Today').
Adding numbers for social proof ('Join 5,000+ Happy Customers').
Creating a little urgency ('Sale Ends Saturday!').
"Chasing a 10/10 Quality Score is a fool's errand. Focus on creating an amazing user experience from search to conversion. The score is just the scoreboard telling you if you're winning."
— Akshay Patel, Founder, ClickMaking
Nailing Ad Relevance for the Gujarat Market
Ad relevance feels obvious, right? But this is where the real magic happens. It's the thread connecting the keyword, the ad headline, and the description. They all need to be singing the same song.
If someone searches for 'rooftop restaurant SG Highway', your ad headline can't just say 'Best Food in Ahmedabad'. It has to be something like 'Stunning Rooftop Dining on SG Highway'. This tiny change can flip your relevance from 'Below Average' to 'Above Average' overnight.
Our team at ClickMaking will use Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) now and then, but we're super careful. It's a powerful tool, but if your keyword list is a mess, you can end up with some really weird, Frankenstein ads. A human touch is almost always better.
Framework breakdown — ClickMaking
The Pillar Everyone Messes Up: Landing Page Experience
This is it. This is where so many campaigns just fall flat. You can write the world's greatest ad, but if the person clicks and lands on a slow, confusing, or totally irrelevant page, they're gone in a second. And Google sees that. They track everything.
Mobile Speed is Everything
I'm not kidding. Go test your landing page on Google's PageSpeed Insights right now. If it takes longer than 3 seconds to load on a 4G connection, you're literally burning money and your Quality Score. Our developers are obsessed with this stuff — compressing images, deferring scripts, whatever it takes to trim milliseconds. It's extra important in India where mobile data isn't always perfect.
Does It Match the Ad's Promise?
If your ad shouts '50% Off Designer Kurtis', the landing page better have designer kurtis with a huge 50% off banner right at the top. Don't just send them to your homepage and expect them to go searching for it. That's a terrible user experience, and Google will punish you for it.
We had a home decor client in Ahmedabad whose Quality Score shot up from 3/10 to 7/10 in just two weeks. The only thing we did? We stopped sending all their traffic to the homepage and instead built specific landing pages for each ad group ('Modern Sofas', 'Vintage Lamps').
Their conversion rate tripled. If you want to learn more about making those pages look great, check our post on AI image tools for social media.
High vs. Low Score: Here's What It Actually Costs You
Let's make this less theoretical. Here’s a quick-and-dirty breakdown of how this affects two imaginary competitors here in Ahmedabad.
Metric
Company A (QS: 8/10)
Company B (QS: 4/10)
Your Max Bid
₹20
₹20
Ad Rank (QS x Bid)
8 x 20 = 160
4 x 20 = 80
Actual CPC
Lower (around ₹12-₹15)
Higher (around ₹25-₹30, might not even show)
Ad Position
Likely #1 or #2
Likely #3, #4, or not on the first page
Outcome
More clicks, lower cost, higher ROI. Happy marketer.
Fewer clicks, higher cost, wasted budget. Sad marketer.
See? Even with the exact same bid, Company A wins completely. This is why we hammer home the importance of quality in our PPC campaigns, not just throwing more money at bids.
What Other Guides on Quality Score Don't Tell You
Most blogs on this stuff are so generic. Here's what we've learned running ads specifically for Indian, and especially Gujarati, businesses.
The Power of 'Hinglish' and 'Gujlish': For some products, using a mix of English and local slang in your ad copy is gold. It boosts CTR like crazy. An ad for a Navratri chaniya choli that says 'Ready for Garba?' is almost always going to beat a super formal ad.
Server Location Is a Big Deal: We always tell clients with heavy local traffic to get their pages hosted on servers in India (like Mumbai). That tiny reduction in delay can trim half a second off load times, which is a direct boost to your Landing Page Experience score.
Trust Signals for India: A generic landing page is a dead end. For Indian shoppers, trust signals are everything. We add things like WhatsApp chat icons, 'Cash on Delivery Available' badges, and testimonials with local names and faces. These little things raise trust and keep people on the page longer, signaling a good experience to Google. The Shopify Blog has some killer articles on building e-commerce trust.
Real implementation example — ClickMaking
Quick Story: A Bodakdev D2C Brand We Helped
A few months back, a skincare brand from Bodakdev came to us. They were blowing about ₹75k a month on Google Ads with almost nothing to show for it. Their average Quality Score was a painful 3/10.
- The Problem: One campaign, one ad group for everything—face wash, serum, you name it. The ads were vague and all clicks went straight to the homepage. Their costs were high and sales were low.
Our 4-Week Plan:
Week 1: Total teardown and rebuild. We split the campaign into 5 tight ad groups: 'Vitamin C Serum', 'Acne Face Wash', etc.
Week 2: Wrote fresh, super-relevant ad copy for every single group. The ad for 'Acne Face Wash' had a headline like 'Fight Pimples Fast with Our Neem Wash'.
Week 3: Used a tool like Unbounce to quickly build simple, dedicated landing pages for the top 3 ad groups. Each page focused ONLY on that one product.
Week 4: Went to town on mobile page speed, getting their load time down from a crazy 6 seconds to under 2.5.
The Result (After 6 weeks):
Average Quality Score: Jumped from 3/10 to 7.5/10.
Average CPC: Dropped by 45% (from ₹35 to around ₹19).
Conversion Rate: Went up by 250%.
Now they're actually making money from their ads and can afford to scale their budget. That’s the real-world impact of focusing on quality. This isn't just theory, yaar; it's actual profit. Curious if we can do something similar for you? You can always book a free chat with my team.
"People think PPC is just about bidding higher. It's not. The smartest advertisers in Ahmedabad are winning by paying less per click because they've mastered relevance and user experience."
— Akshay Patel, Founder, ClickMaking
Your Action Plan: A Checklist for a Better Score
Okay, enough talk. Here’s what you can do right now to start seeing improvements.
Audit Your Ad Groups: Open your Ads account. Got ad groups with 15-20+ keywords that aren't super similar? Break them up. Now.
Read Your Own Ads Aloud: Do they sound like a robot? Be honest. Add specific benefits, numbers, and a clear call to action.
Check Your Search Terms Report: See irrelevant searches triggering your ads? Add them to your negative keywords list immediately. This is the fastest win you'll get.
Test Your Page Speed: Use Google's PageSpeed Insights. If your mobile score is red, it's an emergency. Send that report to your developer.
Match Your Headlines: The main H1 title on your landing page should be a close match to the ad headline that got the click. No surprises.
Use Ad Extensions: Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets. They're easy to set up and give Google more proof that your ad is relevant, giving your CTR a nice boost.
Spy on the Competition: Search your top keywords. Who's at the top? What are their ads saying? You don't need to copy them, but you need to know who you're up against. The HubSpot Marketing Blog offers great tips on this.
Just working through this list will do more for you than staring at your QS number, waiting for it to change. I know it seems like a lot of work. Because it is. This is what we do all day. If you’d rather focus on running your actual business, you can always give us a shout to handle it for you.
For more deep dives into SEO and site authority, the Moz Blog is a fantastic resource.
Frequently Asked Questions
So, what's a good Quality Score in 2026?
Aim for 7/10 or higher. That's solid. A 5 or 6 means you've got work to do. If you're seeing 4/10 or less, consider it a big red flag. You have a serious relevance problem that's costing you money every day.
How often should I even check my Quality Score?
Don't get obsessed and check it daily. A weekly or bi-weekly check is plenty. You're looking for trends over time, not daily blips. Spend your energy fixing the three pillars—CTR, relevance, landing page—not just watching the score.
Can a low score get my ads shut down?
It won't get them 'disapproved' in the traditional sense, but it can stop them from showing up at all. If your score is really in the gutter (like a 1/10 or 2/10), Google might just decide your keyword isn't worth showing in the auction, which basically kills the ad for that search term.
Does my Quality Score affect my SEO rankings?
Nope, no direct link at all. Your Google Ads Quality Score has zero influence on your organic SEO rankings. They're run by totally separate systems. That said, making your landing page faster and better for users to improve your Quality Score can also help your SEO, since Google likes fast, user-friendly sites for organic ranks too.
Where can I actually see my Quality Score?
Easy. In your Google Ads account, go to the 'Keywords' area. Click the 'Columns' icon, then 'Modify columns'. Find the 'Attributes' section and add 'Qual. score', 'Landing page exp.', 'Exp. CTR', and 'Ad relevance'. Now you've got the full diagnostic picture.
How long will it take to improve my score?
Depends on how much traffic you get and how big your changes are. If you do a major overhaul of your ad groups and landing pages, you can see the score start to move in a few days to a couple of weeks. Google needs to collect new data on clicks and impressions.
Is a 10/10 Quality Score actually possible?
Yes, but don't chase it. It's totally possible for your own brand name keywords where relevance is perfect. But for your main, non-branded keywords, getting a 10/10 is super hard and usually not worth the effort. A consistent 8/10 or 9/10 is a much smarter, more profitable goal.
Does my budget size affect my Quality Score?
Bilkul not. Your budget has no direct effect on your score. A small advertiser in Prahlad Nagar with a super relevant ad can get a better score than a huge company on CG Road with a lazy setup. The game is designed to reward relevance, not how much you spend.
At the end of the day, Google's job is to give users the best answers. That includes ads. If you help them do their job better, they reward you with a higher Quality Score, lower costs, and more business.
It's a win-win. If you're an Ahmedabad brand drowning in all this, let's talk. Grab a free strategy call with my team and we can give your account a quick audit.
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Originally published at clickmaking.com — ClickMaking is a digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad helping Indian businesses rank on Google.
