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Google’s “Ad Strength” score is not a performance metric. Stop optimizing for it
Posted by on April 20, 2026 at 5:14 pmIf you're running lead gen campaigns, chasing "Excellent" ad strength on your RSAs is likely hurting your conversions.
Ad Strength is a relevancy proxy, not a results proxy
Google designed Ad Strength to measure how well your ad could serve a variety of search queries. More headlines, more variety, fill all 15 slots. The score is really asking: "How much flexibility are you giving us to match ads to user intent?"
You might have a "Poor" rated ad that says the same sharp thing every single time and a "Good" rated ad that says something different to everyone. Both have the same chance of success.
How to actually test this
Run a proper A/B test: one RSA fully unpinned (chasing Excellent), one RSA with your top headline and CTA pinned. Same campaign, same budget split, let it run 4+ weeks. Don't judge on CTR alone. Judge on leads, cost per lead, and lead quality.
TLDR: Ad Strength tells Google how flexible your ad is. It says nothing about whether your ad converts. For lead gen, message consistency almost always beats headline variety.
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1 Reply
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yeah this took me embarrassingly long to learn. had a campaign where my ‘poor’ rated ad was beating the ‘excellent’ one by like 35% on cost per lead, but the account rep kept flagging it. eventually pinned position 1 with our main value prop, left the other slots open, leads improved, score dropped to Good, nobody cared. for B2B lead gen especially, i’d rather have someone read the same clear thing 5 times than see 5 different things that don’t quite land
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I think everyone worth their salt knows this already mate. If you just found out then read more and post less.
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Has nothing to do with conversions
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Indeed. Google Ads “Ad Strength” just measures asset variety, not whether your ads actually drive conversions or revenue. You can have “Excellent” strength and still lose money, or “Average” and crush it.
Optimize for CTR, CVR, and actual conversion data, not a cosmetic score.
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It’s a measurement that tries to coerce you in the direction Google wants you to go, like many of Google’s metrics. It doesn’t always mean their incentives are misaligned with yours, but often they are. It’s our job to figure out which is which.
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