Basics
Landing page
A landing page is the web page (or app screen) a person arrives at after clicking an ad, designed to convert that visitor into a buyer, sign-up or lead.
The landing page is where the ad hands over to the advertiser. A good one matches the ad's promise, loads fast and makes the next step obvious. A bad one, slow, confusing or unrelated to the ad, wastes the click the advertiser just paid for.
Landing page experience is part of Google's Quality Score, so it directly affects the CPC a search advertiser pays. Advertisers A/B test landing pages and use pixels or server-side Conversions API events there to record conversions. In apps, deep linking sends users straight to a specific in-app screen instead.
Landing pages matter for fraud analysis too. Clicks that arrive on the landing page with no scrolling, zero time on page and no conversions are a common sign of click fraud or bot traffic. And cloaking schemes show review systems a harmless landing page while sending real users to a scam.
Think of it like this
The landing page is the shop door the ad points to: if it is locked, dark or leads to the wrong department, the customer turns around.
An example
An e-commerce brand changes its landing page to load in 1.5 seconds instead of 5; its conversion rate rises from 2% to 3%, cutting CPA by a third.
Related terms
Conversion
A conversion is a valuable action that an advertiser wants people to take after seeing or clicking an ad, such as a purchase, sign-up, app install, call or form submission.
CPC (cost per click)
CPC (cost per click) is a pricing model where the advertiser pays only when someone clicks the ad, and also the average amount paid per click.
Quality Score
Quality Score is Google Ads' 1-to-10 diagnostic rating of how relevant and useful a keyword's ads and landing page are, based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.
CTR (click-through rate)
CTR (click-through rate) is the percentage of ad impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100.
Tracking pixel
A tracking pixel is a tiny piece of code, historically an invisible 1x1 image, that loads when a page or ad is viewed and reports that event to a server.