Google AdWords Introduces a Mobile Speed Score for Landing Pages

Paid search with AdWords (which becomes Google Ads on July 24) is one of the fastest ways to get strong visibility on Google. Within minutes, you can show ads in search results for highly competitive keywords. But be careful: if your campaign isn’t properly optimized, you risk spending money on irrelevant clicks. And if your website is too slow, you risk driving away the people who did click. To help you check whether your landing pages load fast enough, Google has added a “mobile speed score” to the AdWords interface.

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A quick refresher for anyone new to Google’s ad platform: AdWords runs on a bidding system that lets you show an ad at the top of Google for the keywords you choose. Each time someone clicks your ad, you pay Google a certain amount: the cost per click, or CPC.

To make your campaign as effective and profitable as possible, every click needs to bring a qualified visitor to your website.

Landing Page Load Time: Essential for Paid Search

Getting good results from Google AdWords obviously means optimizing your ads and bids, choosing the right keywords, scheduling your ads, setting up ad extensions, and structuring your campaign well. But that’s not all. In a post published in June 2018, Jon Diorio, Group Product Manager for Google Ads, stressed how important it is to send people to landing pages that load quickly, especially on mobile. According to Google’s retail data, every one-second delay in page load time can cut conversions by up to 20%. Landing page experience is also one of the components of your Google Ads Quality Score.

Google’s figures also show that more than half of web traffic now comes from mobile devices (more in our mobile marketing statistics for 2018). And do you know how long the average mobile page takes to load? 15 seconds. That’s a striking number, especially since more than half of visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load.

Check Your Landing Page Speed in Google AdWords

To help you understand how your landing pages perform (and how load time affects your ads), Google AdWords has introduced a new mobile speed score. It shows at a glance whether your landing pages deliver a good mobile experience or need work. Scores range from 10 for the fastest pages down to 1 for the slowest.

According to Google, the mobile speed score is based on several factors, including the relationship between page speed and potential conversion rate.

Where Things Stand in 2026

Google’s speed metrics have evolved since 2018. Page speed became a mobile ranking factor for organic search with the Google Speed Update in July 2018. Core Web Vitals became part of Google’s page experience ranking signals in 2021, and Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital on March 12, 2024. Fast landing pages still matter for paid and organic results alike; see our website speed optimization checklist.

Want to learn more about our Google Ads management? Référenceur is a Google Partner agency, French-speaking and based in Belgium and Luxembourg, that works with U.S. businesses remotely, through video calls, shared screens, and monthly reporting. Get a free assessment of your campaigns and landing pages.