Before you apply for a Google Ad Grant check that the website's pages load fast enough, especially the home page. A slow site can cause your application to be rejected. Your Ad Grant account can even get temporarily suspended later on if the site slow down.

This isn't just a Google Ads or Ad Grants issue; a slow-loading website can adversely affect your site's performance in search engines, as speed is a ranking factor in organic search. Every website owner should optimize their site for speed.

Google's PageSpeed Insights tool

Use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool pagespeed.web.dev to test individual pages. Always test using the mobile option.

There is no officially specified score that you need to reach, but I've observed that websites scoring 50/100 and above for performance tend to be accepted for an Ad Grant, but those in the red get rejected.

That's not the only factor. Look also at the second-by-second screenshots of the page loading. If it's not loading in the first few seconds that indicates a problem.

Common causes of slow page loading speed

• Over-sized images are usually easy to fix with some routine image optimization, regardless of what tool you use to build your website.
• If redundant JavaScript code is being loaded, depending on how your website is built, that might be easy to fix or impossible depending on your CMS.
• Embedded third party code (Twitter timeline, Facebook embed) might slow down a website, in which case you need to decide how essential it really is.
• A trickier problem to solve, is a long Time To First Byte (TTFB). Is there a long delay before your website even starts to load? That could be a problem on the server, or in the website code.
• What if the tool says it can't even reach your website? That could indicate various problems and is important to fix, since if Google Ads can't reach your page it might disapprove ads using that landing page.

Share this report with your web developer

If pages load slowly, share the report with your web developer so they can use its recommendations to diagnose and fix problems. Re-test the speed until you see an improvement.

If the developer says nothing's wrong and that a different testing tool scores the website highly, remind them that this is the tool Google uses.

The screenshot below shows a website that passes the mobile speed test with a good score:

Choose your CMS wisely

The Content Management System (CMS) is the tool you use to build your website and edit its content. They are not all equal in terms of page loading speed.

WordPress is a good option. Almost all of the code it produces is under your control, and there are many plugins available to help you speed up your pages using techniques such as caching and minification. Even if your site is currently slow, it almost certainly doesn't have to be.

Other reliably fast CMS include Drupal, SquareSpace, and many others.

I regularly see nonprofits using Wix get rejected for Google Ad Grants. When I run speed tests (using PageSpeed Insights) it almost always comes back under 50/100 with recommendations about redundant script and other code issues. If they were using a better CMS they'd be able to fix coding issues, but not in Wix.

I've several times tried running ad campaigns pointed at Wix sites. The usual outcome is that Google Ads flags the landing pages as having a poor experience, leading to poor keyword quality scores, leading to few ads shown.

Please never use Wix to build your nonprofit's website. It's only suitable for the smallest local nonprofit that doesn't intend to use Google Ads and isn't worried about search engine performance.

Also never use Google Sites. It's not possible to connect to Google Analytics or to set up conversion tracking, making it useless for advertising.

Page updated: September 2025