Flight log / Transmission 017

Ad relevance vs. landing page experience: which one is costing you

Quality Score is three report cards stapled together. Each component gets one of 3 grades, graded against the other advertisers who showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.

A Quality Score of 5 tells you something is wrong. It doesn't tell you what. The single number is the least useful part of the metric; the three component statuses underneath it are where the diagnosis lives.

This post is the diagnostic half. It explains what each component measures, how to read the pattern across all three, and which problem you're actually looking at. When you know which one it is, the action plan is in how to improve Quality Score without touching your bids.

What are the three Quality Score components?

Google Ads rates every keyword with enough data on three components, each as Above average, Average or Below average. The comparison is against other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days.

Definitions paraphrased from Google Ads Help.

Two details make the components more useful than the score. Expected CTR is adjusted to remove the influence of ad position and assets, and it assumes the search term matches your keyword exactly. And Quality Score itself is not an input in the ad auction. Google calls it a diagnostic tool.

How do you see which component is below average?

1. Open Keywords in Google Ads and add the columns Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad relevance and Landing page exp.
2. Add the historical versions, such as Quality Score (hist.), to see the statuses for your reporting period instead of just today.
3. Segment by day if you want to see when a status changed.
4. Add cost and conversions, then sort by cost. A Below average status on a keyword that spends nothing is trivia. On your top 20 spenders, it's a priority.

A dash instead of a score means there aren't enough exact-match searches for that keyword to calculate one. Google notes broad match keywords can borrow a score from the matching exact keyword in the same ad group.

How do you read the pattern across the three?

One status in isolation can mislead. The combination usually points to a single root cause. Here's the diagnostic table we use as judgment, not as Google's official mapping.

The pattern that shows up in most B2B accounts: Ad relevance looks fine and Landing page experience is Below average across whole campaigns. That isn't a copy problem. It's usually a routing problem, where many different intents all land on the same page.

What makes ad relevance below average?

Ad relevance measures whether your ad speaks to the intent behind the search. When it's Below average, the ad is usually written for the ad group's general theme, not for this keyword's intent. The common causes:

• Mixed ad groups. "SOC 2 software", "SOC 2 auditor" and "what is SOC 2" in one ad group share one set of ads. One of those intents is buying software, one is hiring a firm, one is learning. No ad serves all three.
• Keyword missing from the copy. Google's RSA guidance says to include at least one of your keywords in your headlines. An RSA full of brand slogans with no topic headline will struggle here.
• Match types pulling in strangers. If broad match is mapping the keyword to adjacent queries, the ad is being judged against searches it was never written for. The search term report shows you.
• Over-pinned RSAs. Pinning a generic brand headline to position 1 can push the topic headline out of the slot that matters.

Google's fix list for this component is structural: match ad language to search terms, and split ad groups by theme, its example being "engagement rings" versus "wedding bands" in separate groups.

What makes landing page experience below average?

Landing page experience asks whether the page is relevant and useful to the person who clicked. Google says higher-rated pages are usually well organized and have text that relates to the search. Its landing page guidance adds the rest: useful, original information about what you advertise, being clear about what the product does, a mobile-friendly page that loads quickly, simple navigation, and a quick, easy path to the action you want.

Here's how that tends to show up in B2B accounts, framed as the visitor feels it:

The common thread is message match: the query, the ad and the page should all be about the same thing. Our message match guide covers how to audit that end to end. The manual fix is unglamorous: send each ad group to the most relevant page you have, and build dedicated pages for your highest-spend intents when no relevant page exists.

One 2026 complication. With final URL expansion turned on in AI Max for Search, Google can send traffic to other query-relevant URLs on your domain when it expects better performance. You control it with URL exclusions at the campaign level and URL inclusions at the ad group level. Our read: if expansion is on, the page people land on may not be the one you set as the final URL, so check where clicks actually go before you start rewriting pages.

And what about expected CTR?

Expected CTR is the third component and the one people misread most. Because Google adjusts it to remove the effect of ad position and assets, you can't fix it by bidding into position 1 or adding sitelinks. And because it assumes the search term matches your keyword exactly, a low status on a broad match keyword says something about the keyword itself, not about the odd queries it matched.

When expected CTR is the only Below average status, the ad is relevant but not persuasive next to the competition. Look at what rival ads offer on that search: a price, a free trial, a specific outcome. If they answer the searcher's next question and you don't, that's the gap. When expected CTR is low alongside the other two, the keyword itself is often the issue: it attracts searchers who were never going to want what you sell.

Which one is costing you more?

Google is blunt about this: "Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction." What the auction does use is auction-time quality, which Google says can include real-time measurements of expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience, among other factors. Same three ideas, measured live, per search. Google also says higher quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs.

That means each component has a cost, but they don't cost the same way:

• Ad relevance costs you mostly at the auction: weaker Ad Rank, higher CPCs, fewer eligible impressions.
• Landing page experience costs you twice. You pay more per click at the auction, then the page converts fewer of those clicks. That second cost doesn't appear in any Quality Score column.
• Expected CTR costs you at the auction and in volume, since fewer clicks per impression means less data and fewer conversions.

If you have to pick one, start with the component that's Below average on the keywords with the most spend. In most B2B accounts that turns out to be landing page experience, because one page is quietly serving a dozen intents.

Where this breaks

• Low-volume keywords get no score. Many long-tail B2B terms show a dash. Diagnose them at the ad group level using search terms and conversion rate instead.
• Statuses are relative. Average means average against whoever else bids on that exact search. A better competitor can move your status without you changing anything.
• It lags. The comparison covers 90 days, so a fix shows up gradually, not the next morning.
• Google doesn't publish weights. We know the three inputs, not how heavily each one counts for your keywords.

FAQ