Which of the following items is not a component of Quality Score?
Correct Answer
Maximum cost-per-click (max. CPC) bid
Why is this the correct answer?
Maximum cost-per-click (max. CPC) bid is not a component of Quality Score. Quality Score is calculated from three factors: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance to the search query, and landing page experience. Your CPC bid is kept entirely separate from Quality Score — it is the other input into Ad Rank alongside Quality Score. This separation is intentional: advertisers who invest in relevance and quality are rewarded with better Quality Scores regardless of how much they bid.
Why are the other options incorrect?
Landing page experience
Landing page experience is one of the three components of Quality Score — Google evaluates how relevant and useful your landing page is to someone who clicked your ad.
Ad relevance
Ad relevance is one of the three components of Quality Score — it measures how closely your ad copy matches the intent of the user's search query.
Expected clickthrough rate (CTR)
Expected clickthrough rate is one of the three components of Quality Score — it predicts how likely your ad is to be clicked when shown for a given query.
Real-World Example
An advertiser increases their max CPC bid from £1.00 to £3.00 but their Quality Score remains at 5/10 because their landing page experience and ad relevance scores are unchanged. Quality Score only improves when they rewrite the ad copy and redesign the landing page — bid changes have zero effect on the score.