Glossary
What is ad relevance in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas1 min readVerified 15 October 2026
Short answer
Ad relevance is one of the three components of Google Ads Quality Score. Google defines it as how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user's search, and evaluates it as Above average, Average or Below average, based on a comparison with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.
It appears as the Ad Relevance column on the Keywords page, beside Quality Score, Exp. CTR and Landing Page Exp., with Ad Relevance (hist.) for past reporting periods. It is not the same thing as Meta's ad relevance diagnostics, which are Meta's own rankings and have their own entry here.
If it reads Below average or Average, Google suggests matching the language of your ad text more directly to user search terms, splitting ad groups with many different keywords that can't be easily addressed by the same ad, and grouping your keywords into themes.
Google also says that moving an ad group with the same ads and keywords to another campaign or account doesn't impact your ad quality, but that moving a keyword to a new ad group that has new ad text can change it. Our reading: a restructure changes this status only when the ads change with it.
Reading these columns is daily work for us
Riibon watches every campaign daily and holds a baseline for each metric, so a move in impression share or Quality Score is judged against what is normal for that account, not against a rule of thumb, before anyone acts on it.
Ask the Riibon app whether your campaigns are losing to budget or to rank. Access starts with a short call: we look at your ads together, then run them for you or set the app up with you.