About Ad Strength for responsive search ads

Note: Text customisation was formerly known as 'automatically created assets'.

Ad strength provides you with feedback to help you focus on providing the right messages to your customers. Ad Strength has 2 components: The overall rating that indicates the potential effectiveness of a relevant ad, and the specific action items that can improve the strength of the ad.

Great creative drives results: Advertisers who improve Ad Strength for their responsive search ads and sitelinks from 'Poor' to 'Excellent' see 15% more conversions on average*.

Note that Ad Strength evaluates the total number of text assets in your responsive search ad, like counting both advertiser-provided and Google-generated text equally when text customisation is activated.

Ad Strength provides feedback on the quality and potential effectiveness of your responsive search ads. Ad Strength has 2 components:

  • The overall rating that indicates the potential effectiveness of a relevant ad. It's a dynamic metric that ranges from 'Incomplete', 'Poor', 'Average', 'Good' to 'Excellent'.
  • The specific action items that can improve the strength of the ad.

Best practice:

Implement at least 2 responsive search ads (RSA) with 'Good' or 'Excellent' Ad Strength per ad group and a unique final URL for each RSA. Advertisers who improve Ad Strength for their responsive search ads from 'Poor' to 'Excellent' see 15% more conversions on average1.

Advertisers with one RSA who add an additional RSA to their ad group (for a total of 2 RSAs) see a 6.6% increase in conversions at a similar cost per conversion.

Advertisers with 2 RSAs who add an additional RSA to their ad group (for a total of 3 RSAs) will see an average 3.7% increase in conversions at a similar cost per conversion.

To help improve your Ad Strength, consider opting into text customisation. The Ad Strength rating of an ad doesn’t directly influence your ad's serving eligibility. Instead, the Ad Strength rating identifies opportunities (during the ad creation or editing stage) to improve your ads to optimise their performance.

On this page

What is Ad Strength?

Ad Strength is a tool that helps you create effective responsive search ads. It ensures that you provide a sufficient and relevant mix of assets, such as headlines, descriptions and sitelinks. These assets combine to match user searches and intent.

Ad Strength has 2 main components:

  • Overall rating: This is an indicator of the ad's potential effectiveness, with ratings including Incomplete, Poor, Average, Good and Excellent.
  • Action items: These are specific recommendations that show you how to improve your Ad Strength.

Ad Strength doesn’t determine whether your ad is eligible to serve. Instead, use this rating during the creation or editing stage to identify opportunities for better performance.

  • Common misconception: Ad strength is a feedback tool for asset diversity and combination testing. It isn't used to calculate Ad Rank, Quality Score or auction wins.
Important: Ad Strength is determined by how well your creative combinations match the keywords in your ad groups. It’s a dynamic metric that recalculates whenever you change keywords, assets or account structure. However, it does not measure external factors, such as the benefits of adding new keywords or the quality of your landing pages and offerings.

Ad Strength primarily evaluates the relationship between the assets you provide and the keywords you are targeting.

  • Asset-keyword relevance: This factor measures whether your headlines and descriptions incorporate your most relevant keywords.
  • Number of headline combinations: Providing up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions allows Google to create more ad combinations. This variety helps the system match your ads to a wider range of search queries.
  • Sitelink sufficiency: A key factor for ad strength is the number of available sitelinks. Having 6 or more sitelinks at the account, campaign or ad group level improves your score. This is a standard requirement for all advertisers, unlike other metrics that focus on variety and relevance.

Example

If your ad group contains many keywords, we recommend maximising your headline count (up to 15) to include your most popular terms and achieve a 'Good+' Ad Strength. For ad groups with fewer keywords, you may not need as many headlines to reach the same rating. In this case, while there are fewer asset combinations, fewer are required to cover your keyword variety.

Key factors influencing Ad Strength

You can achieve a 'Good' or 'Excellent' rating by providing a strong mix of assets for your ad. This allows the system to build the most relevant ad for every search query and maximise performance.

Great creative drives results: Advertisers who improve Ad Strength for their responsive search ads and sitelinks from 'Poor' to 'Excellent' see 15% more conversions on average*.

Consider the following factors to improve your Ad Strength:

  • Keyword relevance: Try including text from your keywords within your headlines and descriptions to improve keyword relevance.
    • Headline placement: A keyword must be contained entirely within a single headline to improve ad strength. It can't be split across 2 headlines.
    • Handling long keywords: For keywords that exceed the 30-character headline limit, place them in the 90-character description fields instead.
    • Utilising popular keywords: Use your ad group’s popular keywords, which are shown during the ad creation process, to assist you in building relevant assets.
    • Keyword insertion: Take advantage of dynamic keyword insertion to automatically boost your ad's relevance. You can also use keyword insertion to improve your ad’s relevance.
    • Keep in mind that Ad Strength is dynamic and updates frequently. When you change your keywords, update your ad copy to maintain high performance.
  • Headline and description quantity: You can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, so make sure that you provide as many as you can. You can maximise the number of ad combinations by providing the maximum number of headlines and descriptions. Asset suggestions are displayed in the ad creation process to help you write high-performing headlines and descriptions. You can accept the suggestions as is, edit them or use them as inspiration.
  • Headline and description diversity: Create unique headlines and descriptions. Describe what you’re selling and your unique selling points that may appeal to different customers that you’re trying to attract. Adding unique headlines and descriptions increases the number of combinations that can be generated to maximise the performance of your ads. Try to avoid adding repetitive words, phrases or ideas.
  • Sitelinks: The number of sitelinks associated with the ad (at the account, campaign or ad group level). To maximise the effectiveness of your ad and attain Good+ Ad Strength, you should provide at least 6 sitelinks (across ad group, campaign and account level) and opt in to dynamic sitelinks.
    • Both advertiser-uploaded sitelinks and dynamic sitelinks are considered when calculating Ad Strength for your responsive search ad.
    • All advertiser-uploaded and dynamic sitelinks in the specific 'branch' of the account > campaign > ad group will count towards the 6+ goal.

How to improve your Ad Strength

Use the recommendations provided in the 'Ad Strength' section. Each time you update an asset, the system will automatically recalculate your score.

  • Add more headlines and descriptions: Provide as many unique assets as possible, up to the limit of 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Increasing your asset count expands the number of potential ad combinations that the system can test.
  • Increase headline and description uniqueness: Create unique headlines and descriptions that highlight various selling points and calls to action. Avoid repeating the same content across different assets to ensure maximum variety.
  • Include popular keywords: Incorporate your top-performing keywords into your ad copy naturally. Follow the suggestions provided during the ad creation process or utilise the keyword insertion feature to improve relevance.
  • Ensure sufficient sitelinks: Add at least 6 sitelinks to your ad. You can use your own uploaded links or opt in to dynamic sitelinks. Improve your ad's performance by applying these assets at the account, campaign or ad group level.
  • Use pinning sparingly: Avoid pinning headlines or descriptions unless necessary, as it limits the system's ability to test combinations. If you must pin an asset, pin several unique versions to the same position.

Pinning reduces the overall number of headlines or descriptions that can be shown. To optimise your asset performance:

  • Don't duplicate pins: Avoid pinning multiple identical or highly similar headlines to the same position, as this blocks A/B testing and lowers your Ad Strength.
  • Use a hybrid approach: Pin only 1 or 2 essential headlines, and leave the rest unpinned to rotate freely.
  • Make use of unique assets: If you must use pinning for compliance, ensure that you have multiple strictly unique assets pinned to the same position.

In addition to Good+ Ad strength, we recommend the following for optimal performance:

Where to check Ad Strength

You can monitor Ad Strength in 2 main places:

  • During ad creation and editing: As you create or edit a responsive search ad, the Ad Strength indicator (and action items) will update dynamically in real-time based on the assets you provide.
  • The 'Ad Strength' column: In the 'Ads' table within your campaign, the 'Ad Strength' column shows the current rating for each ad. Click on the rating to review feedback and improvement suggestions. If this column isn't visible, click the 'Columns' icon, open 'Attributes,' select 'Ad Strength' and click 'Apply'.

Even after reaching 'Good+' Ad Strength, it's important to monitor regularly, as factors like keyword relevance can change over time.

Common issues leading to 'Incomplete' Ad Strength

Here are some common issues that result in incomplete Ad Strength:

  • Final URL is missing: Add a final URL to your ad.
  • Missing ad group: Assign your ad to an ad group.
  • Missing keywords in ad group: Add keywords to your ad group. Your responsive search ad won’t serve without keywords.

Frequently asked questions

How does Ad Strength take text customisation into consideration?

For campaigns where text customisation is enabled, Ad Strength will consider both the assets that you’ve provided, as well as the assets that have been added by text customisation when calculating rating and action items. When creating a new campaign or responsive search ad, ad strength is calculated only using the asset you provide, as Google-customised text assets haven't been added yet. As soon as Google-customised text assets are added, ad strength will update.

Related links

*Source: Google internal data. Date range: 15 August 2025 to 20 August 2025.

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