You set up the Meta Conversions API, saw a little dial in Events Manager labelled Event Match Quality, and it read 4.2. Is that good? Does it matter? Yes, it matters a lot: EMQ is one of the highest-leverage, least-understood numbers on Meta. A weak score means Meta cannot connect your conversions to real people, so it optimises and reports on a fraction of your results. Here is what the score is and exactly how to push it to 7 or above.

What Event Match Quality is

Event Match Quality is a score from 1 to 10, shown per event in Meta Events Manager, that measures how well the customer information you send with each conversion event lets Meta match it to a Facebook or Instagram user. The more reliable identifiers you send — and the cleaner they are — the higher the score, and the better Meta can attribute conversions and find similar buyers.

Think of it as the address quality on a parcel. A full, correct address gets delivered every time; a smudged one gets lost. Each conversion is a parcel, and the customer parameters are the address.

Why it decides your results

When EMQ is low, a large share of your conversions never get matched to a user. Meta then cannot credit them to the right ad, its bidding learns from incomplete data, and your reported ROAS understates reality. The practical pattern is clear: hybrid Pixel plus CAPI setups with strong matching consistently outperform Pixel-only setups, because they recover the events browser tracking loses to iOS, ad blockers, and cookie rejection. EMQ is the meter that tells you whether that recovery is actually happening.

What a good score looks like

For your key events — Purchase and Lead — aim for 7 or higher. Anything in the 3–5 range means you are leaving significant matching, and therefore performance, on the table. Below 3 is a red flag that parameters are missing or malformed.

How to raise your EMQ (in order of impact)

  1. Send email and phone, always, hashed. Email alone typically lands you around 5–6. Adding phone number is usually the single biggest jump. Send both whenever you have them.
  2. Include the click ID (fbc) and browser ID (fbp). A missing fbc is the most common reason scores stall in the 3–4.5 band. It ties the server event to the exact ad click, so pass it through from the landing page.
  3. Add every identifier you legitimately hold — first name, last name, city, state, zip, country, and a stable external ID (such as a customer or order ID). Each extra clean parameter adds matching surface; strong setups send eight or more.
  4. Hash correctly. Personal data (email, phone, name) must be normalised (lowercase, trimmed, phone in E.164) and SHA-256 hashed before sending. Send fbc, fbp, and IP unhashed. Bad hashing silently kills matching.
  5. Deduplicate Pixel and CAPI with a shared event_id so the same conversion counts once. This is core to a healthy server-side setup.

Common mistakes that cap your score

  • Sending the Pixel event but not the matching server event (or vice versa).
  • Dropping fbc/fbp because they were not captured on the landing page.
  • Hashing data that must stay raw, or sending raw data that must be hashed.
  • Passing empty or placeholder fields, which add noise without matching value.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good EMQ score?

Aim for 7 or higher on Purchase and Lead. Five to six is workable but leaves performance unrecovered; below three needs fixing.

Does a higher EMQ actually improve ROAS?

Indirectly, yes. Better matching means more conversions attributed and cleaner signal for optimisation, so reported and real performance both improve. It will not fix weak creative or a bad offer.

Do I need CAPI to get a good EMQ?

Practically, yes. Browser-only Pixel tracking loses too many events to reach a strong score. A Pixel-plus-CAPI hybrid, deduplicated, is what gets you to 7+.

Want to know your current Event Match Quality and the biggest thing dragging it down? Run a free 3-minute audit — no card. Or try the demo.