Google Ads landing page experience: how to fix "below average"

The short answer

Google defines landing page experience as "how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad" (Google Ads Help, Quality Score). It rates it against other advertisers over the last 90 days. The practical meaning is this: when your status is below average, a competitor with a better page can outrank you, or pay less for the same position, even on a lower bid. Google does not say by how much.

What is landing page experience in Google Ads?

Landing page experience is one of the three components Google uses to calculate a keyword's Quality Score, on a scale of 1 to 10. It measures how relevant and useful the page is to the person who clicked. Google rates it above average, average or below average, compared with other advertisers over the last 90 days.

The other two components are expected click-through rate, "the likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown", and ad relevance, "how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user's search" (Google Ads Help). Landing page experience is the only one of the three that is decided after the click, on your website rather than in your account.

Google's Search Ads 360 documentation gives a fuller description: the experience is represented by the usefulness and relevance of the information on the page, ease of navigation, the number of links on the page, and the expectations users have from the ad they clicked (Search Ads 360 Help). That last factor is message match under another name.

What Quality Score is, and is not

Google is precise about this, and most blog posts are not. Quality Score "is not an input in the ad auction". It is "a diagnostic tool" (Google Ads Help). Google also says it "is not a key performance indicator and should not be optimized or aggregated with the rest of your data".

So why care? Because the thing Quality Score diagnoses does matter in the auction. Google lists "quality of ads and landing page" among the factors that decide Ad Rank, alongside bid, auction competitiveness and the context of the search (Google Ads Help, Ad Rank).

Google publishes no weights. Anyone who tells you a below average status costs exactly a set percentage more per click is guessing. The status is a pointer to a problem, not a price.

Where do you find your landing page experience status?

You find landing page experience in the Keywords report in Google Ads. Open the columns menu, go to the Quality score section and add Quality Score, Landing page exp., Exp. CTR and Ad relevance. Each keyword then shows its status. Historical versions of each column let you see whether a change has moved it.

Google explains that a dash in the Quality Score column means "there aren't enough searches that exactly match your keywords" to determine a score (Google Ads Help). Low-volume keywords may never show one. Look at the keywords carrying most of your spend first. More guides on this are under landing pages and paid traffic.

The Landing pages report is the second place to look. It shows clicks, impressions and click-through rate by landing page, and a mobile-friendly click rate that falls below 100% when a page is not always judged mobile-friendly (Google Ads Help, landing pages).

Why is my landing page experience below average?

A landing page experience is usually below average for one of five reasons: the page does not match the ad or the search, it loads slowly on mobile, it is awkward to use on a phone, the content the visitor wanted is hard to find, or the page offers too many ways to leave. One cause is usually dominant. Find it before you change the page.

Use this table to match what you see to the likely cause.

The first two rows are the most common. They are also the cheapest to fix, because they are about words.

How do you fix a below average landing page experience?

To fix a below average landing page experience, follow Google's own five recommendations in order: give people what they searched for, keep messaging consistent from ad to page, use conversion rate as a proxy, make the page mobile-friendly and improve loading speed. Start with relevance and consistency, because they cost least and move most.

Google's guidance, in its own words (Google Ads Help):

1. "Give people what they're looking for." Its example: someone who searches for flannel shirts and clicks an ad for flannel shirts should land on your flannel range, not your homepage.
2. "Keep messaging consistent from ad to landing page." The page should follow through on the ad's offer or call to action.
3. "Try using conversion rate as a proxy for good landing page experience." If the page converts well, it is probably serving visitors well.
4. "Make your website mobile friendly." Google notes ease of navigation matters even more on mobile.
5. "Improve loading speed." In Google's words, speed "can be the difference between someone bouncing or buying."

Relevance and consistency first

For most accounts, the first two fixes cover the problem. Put the ad and the page's first screen side by side and check that the headline repeats the ad's promise, including any price, discount or timeframe. If ten keywords with different intents point at one page, split them. If they point at your homepage, read landing page vs homepage: where your ads should send people first. The full method is in landing page optimisation: the 2026 checklist for paid traffic.

Then speed and mobile

Speed is the most common technical failure. Only 48% of websites pass all Core Web Vitals on mobile, and Largest Contentful Paint is the metric most often missed (HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025). Google's good thresholds are LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP of 200 milliseconds or less and CLS of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads (web.dev).

Google's landing pages help page also states that in retail, "a 1-second delay in mobile can impact mobile conversions by up to 20 percent" (Google Ads Help). That is Google's claim, without a published method. An independent study points the same way: Portent found B2B sites loading in 1 second converted 3 times better than those loading in 5 seconds, across 20 websites (Portent).

Usability on a phone

Mobile usability failures are often invisible on a desktop monitor. The WebAIM Million found 51% of the top one million home pages had form inputs without proper labels (WebAIM Million 2026). On a phone, a placeholder label disappears as soon as someone starts typing. Test the whole path on a real phone, including the form.

How long does it take for landing page experience to improve?

Expect weeks rather than days. Google rates each Quality Score component against other advertisers over the last 90 days, so a fix is averaged in alongside the visits before it. Watch the historical landing page experience column and the page's conversion rate from paid traffic, which responds faster, rather than refreshing the status daily.

This lag is also why you should change one thing at a time. If you rewrite the headline, compress the images and remove the menu in the same week, you will not know which one mattered when the status moves.

A worked example: what the status is worth

Google publishes no weights, so here is a way to think about value without inventing one. Take an Australian service business spending AUD 6,000 a month on search at AUD 5.00 a click: 1,200 clicks. If the landing page converts at 3%, that is 36 enquiries at about AUD 167 each.

Fixing the causes behind a below average status, such as the mismatch and the slow mobile load, has two separate effects. One is on the auction, which Google says rewards better pages with better positions at lower prices, but by an amount it does not disclose. The other is on conversion, which you can measure. If the same fixes lift conversion from 3% to 3.5%, you get 42 enquiries and a cost per lead of about AUD 143, before any auction benefit at all.

These figures are invented for the example. The structure is not: the conversion effect is measurable in your own account, and the auction effect, whatever its size, points the same way.

When is a below average status not worth chasing?

A below average status is not worth chasing on keywords with little spend, on keywords whose intent your page should not serve, or when the page converts well from paid traffic already. Quality Score is a diagnostic, as Google says. If the page is doing its job commercially, a component status is a prompt to look, not an order to act.

If the status is below average and conversion has also dropped only for paid traffic, check whether the campaign changed before rebuilding the page. The method is in how to tell a website problem from a campaign problem.

How PostCliq helps

PostCliq is a free website audit from WP Creative, an Australian website growth agency. It checks the page-side causes behind a below average rating: speed and page experience using Lighthouse lab data and Chrome UX Report field data, forms and calls to action, content clarity and accessibility on the pages it reads.

Connected to Google Ads (read-only), it shows spend, clicks and conversions by landing page beside the findings, but it does not see your Quality Score or the ads themselves, so the ad-to-page comparison stays with you. For one page, use the landing page audit, then compare its findings with the keywords showing below average.

What to do next

1. Add the Landing page exp. and historical columns to the Keywords report and sort by cost.
2. List the landing pages behind the below average keywords carrying the most spend.
3. For each page, run the diagnosis table: match, mobile, speed, findability, exits.
4. Fix the most likely cause first. Rewrite the headline to keep the ad's promise before touching design.
5. Run PageSpeed Insights on each page and fix any mobile LCP over 2.5 seconds.
6. Note the date of each change and review the historical column and paid conversion rate after four weeks.
7. Run a free PostCliq audit on the site to find the other page-side problems in one pass.

Frequently asked questions

Which attributes describe a good landing page experience?

Google describes a good landing page experience as relevant and useful to the person who clicked. In practice that means the page gives people what they searched for, keeps the ad's promise, is easy to navigate on a phone, loads quickly and does not bury the content under links or pop-ups. Search Ads 360 help adds the number of links on the page and the expectations set by the ad.

Does landing page experience affect cost per click?

Indirectly, yes. Quality Score itself is not an auction input, but Google says the quality of ads and landing pages helps decide Ad Rank, and that high-quality ads and landing pages can win a higher position at a lower price even against higher bids. Google does not say by how much, so any exact saving you read about is an estimate, not a Google figure.

How does Google measure landing page experience?

Google does not publish the full method. It says each Quality Score component is compared with other advertisers over the last 90 days and rated above average, average or below average. Its guidance points to relevance to the search, consistency with the ad, mobile friendliness, loading speed and ease of navigation as the things that matter, and it suggests conversion rate as a useful proxy.

Why is landing page experience below average when my page converts well?

The status compares you with other advertisers, not with your own history, so a page can convert well and still rate below others on a specific keyword. Often the keyword's intent is slightly different from the page's topic, or the page is slow on mobile. If the page converts well from paid traffic, fix the cheap causes, then treat the status as a prompt rather than a problem.

Can I improve Quality Score without changing the landing page?

You can improve the other two components, expected click-through rate and ad relevance, by improving ads and tightening keyword groups. The landing page experience component only changes when the page, or the page you send each keyword to, changes. Sending a keyword to a more specific page you already have is often the fastest option, because it improves relevance without writing anything new.

What is a good Quality Score in Google Ads?

Quality Score runs from 1 to 10 at the keyword level, and each component is rated against other advertisers. Google advises against treating it as a performance target, calling it a diagnostic tool rather than a key performance indicator. A practical aim is for every component on your high-spend keywords to be average or better, while judging success on cost per lead and lead quality.