The responsive search ad bringing in most of the leads has two pinned headlines and a "Poor" Ad Strength badge. Next to it sits an ad rated "Excellent" that converted four times this month. The client spots the badge first: why is our best ad rated Poor?

The tempting answer is to fix the badge.

Short answer: Google Ads Ad Strength matters less than the badge suggests. Google's help page says Ad Strength isn't used to calculate Ad Rank, Quality Score or auction wins. It grades the variety and keyword relevance of the assets you wrote, before a single click. Judge a responsive search ad on asset-level conversions, and treat the badge as a setup checklist.

The takeaways

Ad Strength never sees a conversion. It is calculated from the assets you typed: how many, how distinct, how close to your keywords. Google states it plays no part in Ad Rank, Quality Score or auction wins.
"Excellent" is not a performance tier. Optmyzr's 2024 study of more than 1 million ads in 22,000+ accounts found RSAs rated "Average" had the best CPA, conversion rate and ROAS.
The asset report is the scoreboard. Since June 5, 2025, Google reports full statistics per headline and description, so every line can be judged on results.

What does Google Ads Ad Strength measure?

Ad Strength measures the inputs of a responsive search ad. The results never enter it. Google's help page on Ad Strength lists what it looks at: how many text assets you supplied, how relevant they are to your keywords, and how many distinct headline combinations the system can build from them. The grades run from Incomplete through Poor, Average and Good to Excellent.

Read that list again and notice what is missing. No click-through rate. No conversion rate. No cost per anything.

The score is computed from the ad as written, which is why it moves the moment you add a headline, long before that headline has served once. That makes Ad Strength a spellchecker for the RSA's setup. Useful while you build the ad. Silent on whether it earns money.

Does Ad Strength affect Ad Rank or cost per click?

No. Google says on the same help page that Ad Strength "isn't used to calculate Ad Rank, Quality Score, or auction wins", and that the rating doesn't directly influence whether an ad is eligible to serve. A Poor badge does not raise your cost per click. An Excellent badge does not buy you position.

There is an indirect path, and it is fair to name it. More distinct headlines give the system more combinations to match against different searches. If those combinations earn more clicks, expected click-through rate improves, and expected CTR does feed Quality Score.

Look at where the benefit comes from in that chain. It comes from headlines people click. The badge rises as a byproduct, and it can climb all the way to Excellent without a single extra click arriving.

Why can an "Excellent" ad convert worse than an "Average" one?

Because chasing the grade changes what you write. Optmyzr analysed more than 1 million ads across over 22,000 accounts in 2024 and found RSAs rated "Average" had the best CPA, conversion rate and ROAS, with ROAS falling sharply at "Excellent". Their summary: no clear correlation between Ad Strength and performance.

I read that study with one caution. It compares ads across accounts, so it cannot prove that Excellent ads are worse by nature. It does fit a mechanism anyone who has chased the badge will recognise.

To reach Excellent you add headlines, and the easy ones to add are generic: "Trusted by professionals." "Get your free quote today." They pass the variety test and dilute the message. The system rotates them into a share of impressions, and the specific headline that sold the click shows up less often. Your Ad Strength went up. Your best argument got quieter.

When should you pin headlines even if Ad Strength drops?

Pin when a line has to appear: a legal disclaimer, a price the landing page repeats, the brand name in a branded campaign, or the one claim that carries the click. Google's help page warns that pinning limits the combinations the system can test and lowers Ad Strength. Both statements are true, and both are acceptable when the pinned line is the one that sells.

Leave room where you can: pinning two or three alternatives to position 1 keeps rotation inside that slot. In the same Optmyzr study, selective pinning came out roughly level with no pinning on CPA and ROAS, while fully pinned ads traded conversion metrics for click-through rate.

My working rule: if a client or a regulator would object to the ad without the line, pin it and ignore the badge. If you just like the headline, let it compete in rotation first.

How should you judge a responsive search ad instead?

Judge a responsive search ad on asset-level results. Google's help page on the ad-level asset report says full performance statistics are now available for each headline and description (for dates on or after June 5, 2025), and the old "Performance label" column is deprecated. Open the report, sort by conversions and read three things.

First, which headlines carry the conversions. On most RSAs a few lines do the work and the rest idle on low impressions.

Second, which headlines serve a lot and convert little. Those are the filler the system keeps trying. Replace them with a different message, not a reworded copy of the same one.

Third, how many conversions sit behind each row. A headline with 2 conversions has proved nothing yet, and the small-sample caution from reading ad test results applies to every line in the report.

Keep Ad Strength for what it does well: flagging, while you write a new ad, that you gave the system too few distinct ideas.

Where the badge stops and the copy starts

Ad Strength cannot judge the part that decides results: whether each headline says something a buyer cares about. Google's other prompts deserve the same scepticism, as covered in auditing Google Ads recommendations.

For ad creation, Adscalr runs a copywriting critic that scores every generated concept against 6 direct-response principles, pass or fail, with the offending line quoted. It does not grade your RSA assets or touch your Google Ads account. It asks what the badge skips: does this line give anyone a reason to click?

Pin the line that sells. Let the badge say Poor.

Does Google Ads Ad Strength matter?