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Landing page experience "Below average": how to fix it

By SpendCanary team · Updated

A “Below average” landing page experience means Google thinks the page your ad sends people to is less relevant or useful than the pages of other advertisers showing for the same searches. Your ads keep running, but a weak page can make each click cost more and your ads show less. The good news: the fixes are in your hands, and none of them need Google.

What the rating is

Landing page experience is one of the three parts of a keyword’s Quality Score, next to expected click-through rate and ad relevance. Each part is rated Above average, Average or Below average. Google works it out by comparing your page with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.

Google is clear that Quality Score is a diagnostic: it’s not an input in the ad auction and isn’t something to optimise for its own sake. What the auction does use is Ad Rank, and Ad Rank includes the quality of your ads and landing page. Google also says higher-quality ads usually cost less per click. So treat the rating as a warning light: the page behind it is what costs you money.

Where to see it

  1. In Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Keywords.
  2. Select the columns icon, then Modify columns for keywords.
  3. Open the Quality score section and add Landing Page Exp. (and Quality Score). Add Landing Page Exper. (hist.) to see past ratings; segment the table by day to see when it changed.

A dash (“—”) means there weren’t enough searches that exactly match the keyword to rate it. Google renames menus from time to time, so the labels may differ slightly in your account.

The five fixes Google recommends

Google’s advice for an Average or Below average rating comes down to five things:

  1. Give people what they searched for. Send each ad to the page that matches it, not your home page. Someone who clicked “emergency boiler repair” should land on boiler repair, not a list of every service you offer. The search term doesn’t need to appear word for word on the page.
  2. Keep the message consistent. If the ad says “free quote” or “20% off”, the page should say the same, near the top.
  3. Follow through on the offer. Whatever the ad promised (a price, a booking, a call), make it easy to do on the page.
  4. Make it easy to use on a phone. Most clicks come from mobile. Put the key information near the top, keep navigation simple, and avoid clutter from pop-ups or other ads.
  5. Make it load fast. Slow pages lose people before they’ve seen anything.

Google also asks for useful, original information: a thin page with a form and nothing else gives people little reason to stay.

Google says your conversion rate doesn’t affect the rating. A page can convert well and still be rated below average, and the other way round.

Check your page with free tools

  • Our landing page checker: paste your page and your ad’s headlines, and see whether the page loads quickly on a phone, shows a phone number, form or booking button, and matches the ad.
  • PageSpeed Insights: Google’s speed test for mobile and desktop. It reports Core Web Vitals; these are good targets for a fast page, though Google Ads doesn’t say it uses the scores directly.

Google’s old Mobile-Friendly Test was retired in December 2023, even though some Google Ads help pages still mention it.

Below average is not a disapproval

“Destination not working” and “Destination mismatch” are different: they’re policy problems. A page that doesn’t load, returns an error to Google’s crawler, or sends people to a different domain from the one in your ad gets the ad disapproved, and a disapproved ad stops showing. Fix those first. A Below average rating is a quality signal; the ad keeps running.

How long a fix takes to show

Google doesn’t give a time. The rating looks back over 90 days of searches, so expect it to move gradually. Watch Landing Page Exper. (hist.) by day after you change the page.

Sources

Common questions

What does landing page experience "Below average" mean?
Google compares how relevant and useful your landing page is for people who click your ad with other advertisers who showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days. Below average means your page did worse than most of them.
Does a below average landing page stop my ads?
No. It is a diagnostic rating and your ads keep running. Google says Quality Score itself is not an input in the ad auction, but the quality of your ads and landing page is part of Ad Rank, so a weak page can mean higher costs and fewer impressions.
How long until the rating improves after I fix my page?
Google doesn’t say. The rating compares the last 90 days of searches, so give it time and watch the historical column by day.
Does my conversion rate affect landing page experience?
Google says no: conversion rate doesn’t affect your landing page status. Relevance, usefulness, ease of use on mobile and speed do.