How to Fix Low Ad Rank in Google Ads (Eligible but Rarely Shown)

By Corey Frankosky · Last Updated August 6, 2026

If you have ever opened Google Ads and seen the message "eligible but rarely shown due to low ad rank," it means one thing. Your keyword is not winning auctions, so it is getting almost no impressions. In this guide you will learn what ad rank actually is, the factors that go into it, and the exact steps to fix a low ad rank keyword. Most of the time the real problem is not your bid. It is search intent.

1What "Eligible but Rarely Shown" Really Means

When Google marks a keyword as "eligible but rarely shown due to low ad rank," it is telling you the keyword can technically run, but it almost never clears the bar to show. Your keyword has no recent impressions because your ad rank is too low to win the auction.

Every time someone searches, Google runs an auction. It looks at your bid and it looks at your quality for that keyword, then decides whether your ad is eligible and where it ranks. So much of bidding is automated now that quality carries even more weight. If you run Maximize Conversions or Maximize Clicks without a strong quality signal, Google has to spend more to get you into the auction, which is why you sometimes see surprisingly expensive clicks tied to a weak keyword.

The message is not a dead end. It is Google pointing at the exact thing you need to fix.

Question to Answer:

Which of your keywords currently show "eligible but rarely shown" or a low ad rank warning?

2Watch: How to Fix Low Ad Rank

Here is the full walkthrough where I go through real Google Ads accounts, read the quality score columns, and show how search intent decides whether a keyword ever gets impressions. The rest of this post follows the same process.

3What Ad Rank Is and the 6 Factors

Ad rank is the set of values Google uses to decide whether your ad is eligible to show and where it shows relative to other advertisers. It is calculated fresh every single time someone searches, and it is recalculated for each position on the page. Google builds your ad rank from six factors.

Two of these are the ones you control directly and quickly: your bid and your quality. When a keyword is rarely shown, you almost always fix it by raising quality, not by throwing money at the bid.

Question to Answer:

Of the six ad rank factors, which one is actually holding your keyword back?

4Ad Rank vs Quality Score

People mix these up constantly. Ad rank is the auction-time score that decides if and where your ad shows. Quality Score is Google's summary of your ad quality, reported on a 1 to 10 scale, and it is built from three components.

• Expected click-through rate. How likely people are to click your ad when it shows for that keyword.
• Ad relevance. How closely your ad matches the intent behind the keyword.
• Landing page experience. How useful and relevant your landing page is to someone who clicks.

Quality Score is a diagnostic, not the actual number used in the auction. But the same signals that drive Quality Score feed ad rank. So when you improve ad relevance and landing page experience, you raise both. Higher quality also lowers your cost per click, which is why the same keyword can cost you far less than a competitor who ignored it. My guide on using Quality Score to lower your CPC goes deeper on that payoff.

Question to Answer:

Do you know your Quality Score and its three component ratings for your low ad rank keyword?

5Diagnose It First: Add the Quality Score Columns

Before you change anything, find out why Google is unhappy. This takes about a minute.

1. Open your Keywords report. Go to the campaign or ad group with the rarely shown keyword.
2. Modify your columns. Add Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. Keep them on all the time so you never fly blind.
3. Read the ratings. Each component shows Below Average, Average, or Above Average. If you are above average across all three, that keyword is not your problem.
4. Use Ad Preview and Diagnosis. Enter the keyword, pick a location and device, and Google will tell you the specific reason your ad is not showing.

The two ratings that suppress delivery the most are landing page experience and ad relevance. A Below Average on either of those will hold a keyword down harder than a low bid will. That is where you focus first.

Question to Answer:

Which component, expected CTR, ad relevance, or landing page experience, is rated Below Average?

6The Real Fix Most People Miss: Search Intent

Here is the part almost everyone skips. A low ad rank is usually a search intent problem. You are bidding on a keyword whose intent does not match your ad and your landing page, so Google scores you low and stops showing you.

Take landscape design. Say you are a landscape designer and you throw a few related keywords into one ad group. They look the same, but Google reads them very differently.

Drop landscape architect into your landscape design ad group and change nothing else, and you will get a low quality score, because you have no page built for master-plan, commercial work. The fastest way to see how Google reads a keyword is to search it yourself and look at what ranks. If the results for landscape architect are all commercial master plans and campus projects, that keyword does not belong with your residential design keywords.

The same thing happens with insurance credentialing versus credentials. Credentialing is a practice getting approved to bill insurance. Credentials can mean certifications and digital badges. Same root word, completely different intent. When you review the searches coming in, do it the same way you would for negative keywords, and split anything whose intent does not match.

Question to Answer:

If you searched your low ad rank keyword on Google right now, would the top results match what you sell?

7Fix Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience

Once the intent is right, the fix is structural. You align the ad group, the ad, and the landing page around one tight theme.

• Break big ad groups into small themed groups. One intent per ad group. This is the single biggest lever for ad relevance.
• Put the keyword in the ad. Use the keyword in Headline 1 and pair it with a specific offer. That lifts expected click-through rate.
• Send traffic to a matching page. If you target landscape design, send people to a landscape design page, not a generic homepage or a bare opt-in with no real content on it.
• Give the page real substance. Google scores landing page experience on usefulness. A page that answers the search fully beats a thin page every time.

In the video example, a keyword like Google Ads tutorial scored a 2 out of 10 because the landing page was a bare email opt-in with no tutorial on it. The fix was simple. Give the page real information first, then ask for the opt-in, and build a relevant ad in its own ad group.

Question to Answer:

Does the landing page for your keyword actually deliver what the searcher is looking for before asking for anything?

8When to Just Raise the Bid

Bid is one of the six ad rank factors, so sometimes the answer really is a higher bid. If your quality ratings are already average or above and the keyword still barely shows, you are likely in a competitive auction where your bid is not clearing the threshold.

Keep in mind that a keyword with a very low Quality Score rarely wins at any reasonable bid, so raising the bid on a low quality keyword just burns money. Fix quality first, then raise the bid if you still need more of the top of the page. If your goal is specifically to show at the top, the Target Impression Share bid strategy lets you bid toward the top or absolute top location directly.

Question to Answer:

Is your keyword rarely shown because of low quality, or because your bid is not competitive in a strong auction?

9Your Low Ad Rank Fix Checklist

When you see the low ad rank message, work through this in order.

1. Add the quality columns and read the three component ratings for the keyword.
2. Run Ad Preview and Diagnosis to confirm the exact reason it is not showing.
3. Check search intent by searching the keyword and comparing the results to what you sell.
4. Split mismatched keywords into their own themed ad groups, or remove them.
5. Rewrite the ad so the keyword and a clear offer are in the headlines.
6. Match the landing page to the keyword and give it real, useful content.
7. Raise the bid last, only after quality is average or above.

If you would rather have this handled for you, that is exactly what my Google Ads management services cover, and the full system behind it is what I teach in the Surfside PPC Google Ads Course.

Question to Answer:

Have you worked through the checklist in order, starting with quality, not bid?