The three parts of Quality Score
Quality Score is Google's way of showing how your ads compare to other advertisers. Google rates it from 1 to 10, at the keyword level. It is built from three parts:
Expected clickthrough rate
How likely people are to click your ad when it shows.
Ad relevance
How closely your ad matches the intent behind the search.
Landing page experience
How relevant and useful your page is to people who click your ad.
Each part gets one of three ratings: above average, average, or below average. Google compares you with advertisers whose ads showed for the same search over the past 90 days. Google says an Average or Below average status may point to a chance to improve.
Two of the three parts live inside the ad account. Landing page experience is the one that lives on your page. That is why someone who runs good ads can still get a low rating here. The ads are fine. The page is not.
To see your ratings, open Keywords under Campaigns in Google Ads. Use the columns icon to add the Quality Score columns. You can add each part as its own column.
What Google looks for on the landing page
Google keeps its description short. It calls landing page experience a measure of how relevant and useful your page will be to the person who clicks. It says pages with higher ratings are usually well organized and have text that relates to what the person searched for.
In its tips for improving Quality Score, Google adds more detail for the page:
- Give people what they searched for. If the ad says roof repair, the page should be about roof repair, not your whole list of services.
- Keep the message the same. The ad's offer and the page's headline should match.
- Make it work on phones. Google tells advertisers to make the site mobile friendly, since easy navigation matters even more on a small screen.
- Make it load fast. Google says the speed your page loads can decide whether someone leaves or buys.
Google also says conversion rate can be a useful stand in for landing page quality, even though it does not set the rating. That is one more reason to make sure your conversions are actually being counted.
What a landing page experience checker can check
A tool outside Google cannot see your rating. But it can check the parts of the page that you control and that Google points to. That is what ClickMend does. It checks the page your Google Ad sends people to, called the final URL.
| Google's tip | What ClickMend checks |
|---|---|
| Load fast | Google PageSpeed Insights performance score, 40% of the ClickMend score |
| Work well for visitors | Core Web Vitals: load, response to taps, and layout shift, 25% of the score. Real Chrome user data when Google has it, lab data when it does not |
| Well organized, related text | SEO basics like title and description, 20% of the score |
| Usable page | Best practices (10%) and accessibility (5%) |
| Measure conversions | Google Ads conversion tag present and loaded, placeholder conversion ID, Tag Manager missing, conversion linker off |
It also names the slow parts, such as JavaScript the page loads but never uses. For Core Web Vitals, Google rates Largest Contentful Paint as good at 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 ms or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less. More on that in the landing page speed test guide.
What no outside tool can see
Be careful with any tool that claims to show your landing page experience rating without access to your account. Here is what ClickMend does not do:
- It does not read your Quality Score or your landing page experience rating. Only your Google Ads account shows those.
- It does not judge whether your page matches each keyword. You know your ad groups. Compare the ad and the page headline yourself.
- It does not promise a better Quality Score, lower cost per click, or more leads. It finds problems on the page so you can fix them.
So use both. Your account tells you which keywords have a below average landing page experience. The checker tells you what is wrong with the page those keywords send people to. If you are staring at that warning now, read landing page experience below average.
A fix order that works
- Find the keywords rated below average. Add the landing page experience column in Google Ads.
- Get the final URL for each. Several keywords often share one page. Fix that page once.
- Run a free scan at the health check. Note the score, the slow parts, and any tracking problems.
- Fix tracking first. If the conversion tag is missing, you cannot measure anything else you change.
- Fix speed next. Remove unused scripts and widgets, then shrink big images.
- Check the message match. Make the headline say what the ad said.
- Scan again. Confirm the fix worked on the live page, then check the column in your account later.
One real example, with the name left out: a roofing company's ad page scored 42 and loaded in 4.1 seconds. After fixes it scored 93 and loaded in 1.8 seconds. That is the part of landing page experience you control. For the full list of checks, see the Google Ads landing page audit. For more on the score itself, read the landing page part of Google Ads Quality Score.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I see my landing page experience rating?
In Google Ads, open Keywords under Campaigns. Use the columns icon to add the Quality Score columns, including landing page experience.
Does ClickMend show my Quality Score?
No. ClickMend does not read your Quality Score or landing page experience rating from your account. It checks the parts of the page that feed them.
Will a faster page raise my Quality Score?
We can't promise that. Google says page speed matters to visitors, and speed is one thing you can fix. Your rating depends on more than one page fix.
Is Quality Score used in the ad auction?
Google says no. Quality Score is a diagnostic tool, not an input in the ad auction. It helps you see how your ads compare to other advertisers.