You open Google Ads, check the keywords column, and see it: “Below Average” next to landing page experience. That status is costing you on every single auction — higher CPCs, reduced ad positions, and a signal that Google’s system has already decided your landing page is failing the people clicking your ads.
The problem is never knowing the score is bad. It is knowing what to fix first, and in what order. Since February 2025, Google evaluates your landing page before your ad even enters the auction — a page can receive a “Below Average” rating before a single visitor arrives. In our experience building 3,000+ landing pages, the fix order matters more than the fix list. This guide covers every factor Google evaluates, the exact sequence we follow, and the CPC impact of getting it right.
Quality Score is Google’s 1–10 rating of how relevant and useful your keyword, ad, and landing page combination is for a user. It is made up of three components:
LPX is the component you actually control. CTR is hostage to historical data and auction dynamics; ad relevance demands copy rework across every ad group. The page itself? You can fix that this afternoon.
One critical nuance: Quality Score itself is not a direct input to Ad Rank. Google uses the underlying signals (expected CTR, ad relevance, LPX) independently when calculating Ad Rank and adjusting your CPC. QS is a diagnostic score — a readable summary of how those signals are stacking up. When QS is “Below Average,” it is telling you which signal to fix, not that you have a penalty to clear.
For the full breakdown of how LPX feeds into Quality Score calculations, see our guide: How Landing Pages Affect Quality Score Calculation on Ad Platforms.
Before you fix anything, you need to see exactly what Google is reporting. Across projects for 300+ clients worldwide, we still find accounts running for months — spending real money — where nobody has once checked the LPX status at keyword level.
Step-by-step:
You will see one of three statuses:
| Status | What It Means | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Above Average | Your page is performing better than most advertisers competing for this keyword | Maintain — do not break what is working |
| Average | Your page is in line with what other advertisers serve — room to improve and gain CPC advantage | Medium — optimising here compounds gains |
| Below Average | Your page is underperforming relative to the competition for this keyword. This is costing you in CPC and position. | Immediate — this is your first fix |
Keyword-level vs. account-level QS: Quality Score is calculated at the keyword level, not the account level. A "Below Average" rating on one keyword does not drag down other keywords. Always look at keyword-level data, not the overall account score. Different keywords driving traffic to the same landing page may receive different LPX ratings based on how closely the page matches each keyword's intent.
When Google assigns a “Below Average” landing page experience rating, it is telling you one specific thing: your page is performing worse than the competition bidding on the same keyword. This is a relative measure (not an absolute quality test), which means the same page can be “Below Average” for a competitive keyword and “Average” for a less competitive one.
Since the February 2025 predictive model update, "Below Average" can be assigned before your page receives any traffic. Google evaluates pages before they enter the auction. A freshly built landing page — zero impressions, never clicked — can already carry a "Below Average" rating based on structure, content, and signals alone. You do not need traffic data to diagnose it; you need to fix the page.
The 5 most common causes of a “Below Average” rating:
Diagnostic checklist (run this when you see “Below Average”):
One critical distinction: a “Below Average” rating on one keyword is isolated to that keyword. It does not drag down your other keywords, even if they all point to the same landing page. Different keywords can produce different LPX ratings on the same URL — Quality Score is always evaluated at keyword level, never account level. For beginners who need grounding in the basics first, see What Is a Landing Page.
Google evaluates your landing page across eight distinct signals. The first five were present before 2025; the three marked February 2025 were added in the predictive model update.
"Apexure helped create two landing pages for different lead campaigns. Each included an additional form and survey which has greatly increased our number of leads, but also our quality of information."
— Michael Stewart, Union Home Loan · via GoogleGoogle’s predictive landing page quality model — launched in February 2025 — evaluates your page before it enters any auction. The old reactive model waited for traffic to accumulate signals. The current system makes its judgment before a single visitor lands.
That shift changes everything about diagnostics. A freshly built page can already carry a “Below Average” rating. Waiting for traffic data before fixing issues is no longer an option — Google has already scored you.
What the 2025 model now evaluates:
What this means for B2B funnels: Minimal landing pages that hide scope, pricing context, or service details to "qualify leads in the sales call" are now at higher risk of Below Average ratings. The 2025 update rewards pages that give users enough information to self-qualify — not pages designed to obscure information to force a conversation.
The AI Max connection: In AI Max campaigns, Google uses landing page content as a matching signal. A poor landing page experience costs you twice: once in Quality Score signals, and again in profitable reach, because the system deprioritises your page when matching queries. QS is not visible for Performance Max or AI Max campaigns, but the underlying LPX signals still drive efficiency.
"Apexure created an excellent landing page for my Facebook ads campaign and helped me understand what metrics to look at to see what converts better and what information we could test to get better results."
— Morgan Dean, Reclaim My PPI Tax · via UpworkAfter 10 years of optimising landing pages, the same fixes move LPX from “Below Average” to “Above Average” over and over. The cause is almost always one of these seven things, ranked by impact and speed to implement. Start at the top.
Message match is the fastest single improvement you can make to landing page quality score. Your ad promises “PPC landing pages that cut your CPL,” but the page opens with “We Build Better Digital Experiences.” The visitor is confused. Google notices the same disconnect.
The fix is dead simple: your landing page headline should mirror the language and intent of the ad group driving traffic to it.
If you run multiple ad groups pointing to the same landing page, dynamic keyword insertion in your headline automatically matches the page to the keyword that triggered the ad. It is the closest you get to automatic message match without building separate pages per ad group.
When we audit a new client’s landing pages, the first thing we check is message match. It is the critical gap in more than half of all audits we run — and the fix usually takes less than an hour.
If someone tells you to “make your page load in under 2 seconds,” they are giving you 2019 advice. Google evaluates speed through Core Web Vitals now — three specific metrics based on real-user field data, not lab scores.
| Metric | What It Measures | Good Threshold | Competitive Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | How quickly the main content loads | ≤ 2.5 seconds | ≤ 2.0 seconds to beat competitors |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | How quickly the page responds to user interactions | ≤ 200ms | 43% of sites fail this threshold (CrUX 2025) |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | How much the layout shifts unexpectedly while loading | ≤ 0.1 | Uncompressed images cause most CLS failures |
INP is the new FID: As of March 2024, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital. 43% of sites currently fail the 200ms INP threshold (Google CrUX data, 2025). Poor INP — interactions that take over 500ms to respond — means every button click, form submission, and accordion expand feels broken on mobile. Check your INP in Google Search Console under Core Web Vitals.
Practical fixes that move the needle on LCP: convert hero images to WebP or AVIF format, add fetchpriority="high" to the hero image tag, and eliminate render-blocking JavaScript in the <head>. Background videos are one of the worst LCP offenders we see. We tested this with a client running $50k/month in Google Ads — swapping an autoplay hero video for a static image dropped LCP by 3.1 seconds and improved their LPX rating within two weeks. The video looked impressive in the pitch deck. It was destroying their auction performance.
Skip AMP. It is legacy technology. Core Web Vitals optimisation on your actual page is more durable and more effective. If you are choosing a platform to build on, see our comparison of top landing page builders — CWV performance varies dramatically between platforms.
Between 59% and 64% of global internet traffic comes from mobile (StatCounter, 2025). For most Google Ads campaigns, the majority of your clicks are on a phone. If your page was designed desktop-first and squeezed onto mobile, you are already losing on Quality Score.
Mobile-first for landing pages means more than a responsive layout. It means:
tel: links), not plain textRun every page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile — not desktop. The mobile score is what Google uses for Quality Score evaluation. Most agencies skip mobile testing entirely. That single oversight is often the most expensive mistake in the whole campaign setup.
The February 2025 update made navigational clarity an explicit evaluation signal. Google now assesses whether users can efficiently reach what they need on your page — not just whether it loads and contains the right keywords.
What this looks like in practice:
The most common offender: sending Google Ads traffic straight to the homepage. A homepage has 20+ exit points. It is built for brand discovery, not conversion from a specific keyword — exactly the navigational friction the 2025 model penalises. We still see this in roughly a third of new audits.
For our guide on what makes a well-structured landing page experience, see: Which Attributes Describe a Good Landing Page Experience.
Google compares your landing page against every other page in the auction. Thin, generic, or templated pages lose. Every time. Original content that directly addresses the searcher’s intent wins.
For keyword-level relevance:
The pages that earn Above Average LPX share one trait: they answer the visitor’s question faster and more specifically than any competitor page. Word count is irrelevant — specificity is everything.
See our full guide: Optimizing PPC Landing Pages for Google Ads.
Transparency is now a direct evaluation factor in the February 2025 model. Google is cracking down on hidden subscription charges, buried cancellation terms, confusing CTAs that look like content, and pop-up deception.
One pattern we see consistently: transparency-first pages converted better long before Google started measuring it. Trust signals reduce perceived risk at the exact moment visitors decide whether to act — that conversion lift exists with or without a Quality Score reward.
"If you're looking for someone to build you a high-converting landing page, then look no further. Apexure built me a bottom-of-the-funnel landing page that converted above 4%, double the industry average."
— Harry Haines, Cahill Corporation Limited · via Upwork, November 2022Every unnecessary step between ad click and conversion is a reason to leave. Google sees it the same way. Using our EPIC framework, we prioritise tests by expected impact — friction reduction consistently ranks at the top. Diagnosing it is simple: count the steps between click and conversion.
DOOR3, a NYC-based technology consultancy, came to Apexure after multiple agency relationships that failed to produce results. Their cost per lead was $2,300 — unsustainable for their growth targets. We redesigned their landing pages around conversion-focused PPC principles: message match, reduced friction, targeted social proof, and conversion tracking that fed back into bid optimisation.
IMD Business School ran A/B testing on their MBA programme landing page using heatmap analysis to identify where prospective students were dropping off. By restructuring the page hierarchy, tightening message match to their ad copy, and adding targeted social proof near the CTA, conversion rate lifted by 63%.
Bad Quality Score advice is everywhere. These five myths refuse to die, and acting on them wastes real budget.
The "QS is dead in the AI era" myth: Some commentators argue that Quality Score no longer matters in smart bidding accounts. The reality is the opposite. The underlying signals — especially landing page experience — matter more in automation-heavy accounts because AI Max and smart bidding use those signals to determine profitable reach. Poor LPX signals reduce the efficiency of your entire automated strategy, not just keyword bids.
Quality Score works differently depending on how you run your campaigns. The nuances matter — get them wrong and you will optimise for the wrong thing.
In smart bidding and broad match accounts: Smart bidding optimises for conversion signals, not Quality Score directly. But landing page experience feeds conversion performance (fewer bounces, higher engagement, more conversions), so improving LPX still improves bid efficiency. Think of it as improving the raw inputs that smart bidding uses to make better decisions.
In AI Max campaigns: Quality Score is not displayed for AI Max or Performance Max campaigns. AI Max, launched in May 2025, analyses your entire website and landing page content as a matching signal to determine which queries trigger your ads. A page with poor LPX signals (slow, confusing, irrelevant) gets fewer profitable match opportunities. An Above Average LPX page gets broader, more efficient reach. Early data from advertisers using AI Max shows an average 14% increase in conversions at similar CPA when landing page experience signals are strong. LPX improvements compound in automated campaigns, not diminish.
One of AI Max’s defining features is Final URL Expansion — Google can autonomously select which page on your site to serve as the landing page for a given query, rather than using your specified destination URL. This changes the stakes significantly.
Final URL Expansion means site-wide LPE now matters. In an AI Max campaign with Final URL Expansion enabled, Google may route a search query to any page on your site it judges most relevant. That means every page on your website — service pages, about pages, blog posts — can become an ad landing page. A "Below Average" LPX on your /services/ page can affect AI Max campaign efficiency even if your dedicated landing page is "Above Average." Audit your top site pages in PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console, not just your dedicated campaign landing pages.
The practical implication: AI Max forces a site-wide standard of landing page quality, not just a campaign-level one. The advertisers who gain the most from AI Max are those whose entire site is fast, clear, and intent-matched — not just the page they built for a specific campaign.
When to drop everything and fix QS:
When QS is less important: In Performance Max campaigns, QS does not display and the impact is indirect. For remarketing campaigns targeting warm audiences, LPX improvements still help conversion rates, but the Quality Score mechanism operates differently. Focus on conversion rate first in those contexts.
These three metrics are frequently confused. They look like they measure similar things, but they serve entirely different diagnostic purposes:
| Metric | What It Measures | When to Use It | Directly Controls CPC? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality Score | Keyword-level relevance — expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience combined | Search campaigns — primary diagnostic for CPCs and ad position efficiency | No (indirect via Ad Rank signals) |
| Ad Strength | Creative asset quality and diversity — how many headlines, descriptions, and asset combinations are available | Responsive Search Ads and Performance Max — directional, not a bid input | No (affects ad serving frequency, not bid) |
| Optimization Score | Account-level adherence to Google's recommendations — a percentage score based on how many suggestions you have applied | Account management — directional signal, not an auction input | No (Google's recommendations, not an auction factor) |
The common mistake: optimising for Ad Strength or Optimization Score while ignoring a “Below Average” Quality Score on your highest-spend keywords. Ad Strength does not influence CPC. Quality Score’s underlying signals do. If you are spending budget on search campaigns and your LPX is Below Average, no amount of Ad Strength or Optimization Score improvements will fix your CPCs.
Every client asks this right after we ship the updated page. The honest answer: it depends on impression volume, and there is no way to accelerate it.
Quality Score is recalculated from recent auction data. High-volume keywords — hundreds of impressions per day — typically reflect page improvements within a few days. Low-volume keywords are slower, sometimes taking weeks to accumulate enough data for a score update.
Priority order — which component to fix first:
Minimum impression threshold: Quality Score requires enough impressions to calculate statistically meaningful data. Extremely low-volume keywords (under 10 impressions over a 30-day period) may not show a QS rating at all. Do not interpret a missing QS as a low QS — it is a data gap.
"The Apexure team went above and beyond on our landing page, and I'm thrilled with the results. We've gotten great feedback from our peers and they made us look so good."
— Curtis Boyd, The Transparency Company · via Upwork, December 2022What is a good landing page quality score?
“Above Average” is the target. In Google Ads’ three-tier rating system (Below Average / Average / Above Average), Above Average means your page is performing better than most advertisers competing for the same keyword. This typically corresponds to a keyword-level Quality Score of 7–10 on the 1–10 scale.
Does quality score affect cost per click?
Yes — and the gap is bigger than most people expect. Quality Score reflects the underlying signals that Ad Rank uses to adjust your effective CPC. Advertisers with Above Average landing page experience and ad relevance pay lower CPCs for equivalent positions. Jason Tabeling’s analysis via Search Engine Land (2023) found a 36% CPC difference between Above Average and Average/Below Average accounts. QS is not a direct multiplier, but it summarises the signals that are.
How do I check my quality score?
In Google Ads: navigate to Keywords, click Columns → Modify Columns → Quality Score, then add Quality Score, Landing page exp., Ad relevance, and Exp. CTR. These columns will show you the current status for each keyword. Note that keywords need a minimum number of impressions before Google shows a rating.
What does “below average” landing page experience mean?
It means Google’s systems have judged your landing page less relevant, useful, or user-friendly than most other pages competing for the same keyword. The usual culprits: poor message match between ad and page, slow load times (poor Core Web Vitals), content that misses the search intent, lack of transparency, and confusing navigation. Since the February 2025 update added predictive evaluation, a page can receive a Below Average rating before it accumulates any traffic at all.
Can I improve quality score without changing my landing page?
Partly. You can improve Ad Relevance and Expected CTR through ad copy and keyword structure changes. But if the issue is specifically Landing Page Experience, no amount of ad copy work will fix it. The post-2025 scoring model evaluates the page independently. You have to change the page.
Does Quality Score apply to Performance Max campaigns?
No. Quality Score as a visible metric does not appear in Performance Max or AI Max campaigns. However, the underlying signals — especially landing page experience — still influence how Google’s system distributes your budget and matches your ads to queries. Improving landing page quality in Performance Max improves efficiency even without a visible QS number.
What landing page quality score factors matter most in 2026?
Since the February 2025 update, navigational clarity, transparency, and unexpected destination checks are evaluated alongside the established factors (message match, page speed, mobile experience, content relevance). Message match remains the single fastest fix. Core Web Vitals, particularly the INP threshold of 200ms, are the speed benchmark. The February 2025 additions hit hardest for advertisers whose pages have historically relied on minimal information to “force the call.” That approach now carries a direct LPX penalty.
Does landing page quality score affect AI Max campaigns?
Not as a visible number, no. But the underlying LPX signals directly influence which queries trigger your ads and how efficiently your budget gets distributed. AI Max analyses your page content for dynamic routing, so pages with strong LPX signals get broader, more profitable reach. In practice, landing page quality is one of the most effective levers in AI Max accounts, even though there is no QS column to track.
As CEO and Founder of Apexure, Waseem Bashir's decade-old experience in building high-converting landing pages extends to collaborations with Fortune 500 leaders and over 1000 clients. He transforms this wealth of expertise into remarkable landing pages, inspiring marketers towards targeted marketing success. Read more
Drive More Sales or Leads With Conversion Focused Websites and Landing Pages
Get Started.webp)
A B2B SaaS company spends $30,000 per month on Google Ads and Meta Ads. Both campaigns drive traffic...
LinkedIn Ads is the most expensive mainstream ad platform. Average CPCs sit between $8 and $14 in the...
Get quality posts covering insights into Conversion Rate Optimisation, Landing Pages and great design
