Does ad strength matter in Google Ads? Pinned vs unpinned headlines

Most Google Search ads are responsive search ads. You give Google a set of headlines and descriptions, and it mixes them into different combinations. Ad strength is Google's rating of that set, from Poor to Excellent. It rewards having plenty of headlines, a good variety, and keywords in the text.

It is not the same as Quality Score, which rates your keywords and is based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.

Unpinned means Google chooses which headline goes where, and in what order. Pinned means you lock a headline into a position, such as always first.

Google prefers unpinned, because it gives the system more combinations to test. If you pin headlines, your ad strength rating usually drops. That's why the platform keeps nudging you to unpin.

Left to itself, Google can put together ads that repeat themselves. You can find ads like this: the same words appear twice in the headline and again in the description, which leaves little room for anything that gives someone a reason to click.

Pinning stops that. A simple structure is to pin the keyword to headline 1 and a call to action, such as "Get Your Quote Now", to headline 2. Your ad then always says what you do and what to do next.

Google's own figure, from its help pages, is that improving ad strength from Poor to Excellent brings about 12% more conversions on average, and it says there's a strong correlation between ad strength and conversions. Other people's tests point the other way, and I disagree with Google on this. One agency experiment across 5,000 ad groups found fully pinned ads, with a lower ad strength, got a higher click-through rate, conversion rate and Quality Score than fully unpinned ones.

Google support has confirmed to us that ad strength has nothing to do with Ad Rank.

My approach, especially for small accounts, is to pin everything. Pinning does limit how much Google can test, but a small account hasn't got enough data for that testing to work well anyway. And if you use a strong ad writing strategy, you skip much of the testing Google would have done and start from an ad that converts well and has a good click-through rate.

Ad strength is Google's opinion of how much variety you've given it, not a measure of how well your ad works. Pin your most important headlines, and judge your ads by results: leads and cost per lead.