By Steve Oriola, CEO of Unbounce and Insightly
Google is doubling down on the paid search experience…again.
If you’re a digital marketer who is buried in SEM reports or scrambling to pull your next campaign together, you may not have heard about an announcement Google quietly dropped in early February.
We now know that landing page playbooks are changing and advertisers are being forced to rethink the best practices that have guided their campaigns for years.
Positioned as a “quality update,” the article was titled Search ads and the importance of landing page navigation. A simple title, but this update was packed with calls for advertisers to change their approach in response to Google’s new ad quality prediction model.
The news was released alongside updates to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines—and both demonstrate Google’s dedication to protecting the search experience by holding marketers to higher standards.
Google will no longer tolerate low quality campaigns
Google’s been nudging advertisers toward creating more relevant campaigns for years—but now they’re cracking down.
“Quality Score” has long been Google’s primary method of encouraging advertisers to build higher-quality campaigns that are more likely to perform well. Ad relevance, how closely your ad matches search intent, and landing page experience, how relevant and useful your page is to those who click, are two of three criteria that determine your ad’s quality score.
Google has called out two major ways advertisers are continuing to fall short:
● Sending ad traffic to homepages or generic pages that don’t match the search intent
● Failing to guide visitors with clear navigation or next steps to help them find what they need
So here’s what’s changed:
● Google announced its new ad quality prediction model, which will flag poor landing page experiences and stop serving those ads altogether
● Several best practices that have guided countless campaigns are officially no longer relevant
This update signals a shift from simply equipping marketers with tools like Quality Score to improve their campaigns, to using technology like the ad quality prediction model to actively weed out advertisers who don’t adapt or comply with Google’s paid search standards.
Google’s update is rewriting paid search best practices
This update has turned a lot of best practices upside down, so let’s start by talking about the most jaw dropping ones.
The update that will surprise most marketers? Landing pages used in paid search now need some form of navigation. For years, best practices told marketers to isolate visitors with a single call-to-action and no exit points. But with Google’s update, it’s time to retire that playbook.
The biggest red flag for Google is when visitors bounce back to search. That signals that your page didn’t deliver—whether it’s because the info promised in your ad was buried, or key actions, like product log in, weren’t easily accessible.
The fix doesn’t have to be complex. “Navigation” shouldn’t be as comprehensive as what you have on your homepage. Anchor links that guide searchers to the right information or next steps fast can go a long way.
The next clear change is that you can no longer buy performance. Despite the economic climate we’re in today, Google stands by searchers by not allowing advertisers to throw money at poor quality campaigns. That’s right, big budgets no longer increase the chances of your ads getting served.
It’s time to re-humanize the paid search experience
Google is now pushing marketers to prioritize the search experience over conversions. That means your landing pages need to deliver what searchers are actually looking for, even if they’re not ready to buy or convert. If your page doesn’t help them find answers or take the next step, your ad performance will suffer.
Marketers know that the best way to convert is to lead with value, but many have lost sight of that. As a SaaS leader who’s experienced the toll of economic uncertainty, from leaner teams to rising pressure on performance, it’s easy to understand why some advertisers have started cutting corners.
That said, desperation often leads to self-serving tactics—but neither searchers nor Google are tolerating them anymore.
Most marketers are further behind than you’d think
If you’re thinking, “It’s 2025…who is still sending ads to generic pages?” you’re ahead of the game. That said, 52% of B2B PPC ads are going to home pages instead of landing pages.
Let’s unpack that a bit more. You might be wondering why you would use a landing page when you’ve proudly invested so much energy into your homepage, which, hypothetically, includes everything a buyer might need.
Keep in mind: to Google, “relevant” and “easy to navigate” don’t equate to information overload. What matters most is how quickly a visitor can access what they’re looking for, not that the information is simply available. So if your ad refers to a specific feature but takes visitors to a product page where it’s buried at the bottom—or worse, not there at all—they’re likely to bounce back to search. That’s exactly how your ad gets flagged by Google as irrelevant.
What can marketers do to pivot faster
There are plenty of reasons marketers choose a landing page builder for paid search, but with Google’s latest update, it’s truly a critical tool that helps you adapt—fast.
Google now expects every landing page to deliver on the promise of your ad. If you’re still relying on a few generic pages or your homepage for all of your campaigns, you’ll need to rethink your approach.
Scalability is key. A landing page builder lets you quickly create and tailor pages to match intent without waiting on designers or devs. If your business runs a lot of ads, you’ll need your whole team to be able to move quickly and autonomously.
To stay visible, your landing pages have to keep up—with your ads and with Google’s expectations.
Google-proof your campaigns with Unbounce’s landing page kit
As Google’s latest updates reshape paid search best practices, marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver relevant, easy-to-navigate landing pages. For teams seeking to pivot quickly, resources such as Unbounce’s landing page kit, featuring templates with built-in navigation, can help streamline the process and ensure compliance with evolving standards. Leveraging such tools allows marketers to focus on creating user-centric experiences, rather than getting bogged down by technical hurdles.
Steve Oriola is the CEO of Unbounce. He is a tenured CEO with more than two decades of experience scaling dynamic B2B SaaS platforms, including Act!, Constant Contact, Pipedrive, and Julius. He recently led Unbounce through the acquisition of Insightly CRM where the two companies effectively merged. He served as Executive in Residence at Bessemer Venture Parters where he participated in partner meetings and evaluated investment opportunities while providing advice and counsel to portfolio companies. Steve Oriola attended Boston University Questrom School of Business.
