The Landing Page That Stopped Working: How to Catch Faults in Time

A landing page is the page an ad leads to. It can stop working without anyone noticing. A new website goes live and an old address disappears. Or the form is updated and stops sending enquiries. The ads keep running and the clicks cost as much as before.

Google detects some of the faults itself and can disapprove ads that lead to pages it cannot reach. A form that does not send or tracking that has stopped counting, on the other hand, looks normal to Google. It is only noticed when the enquiries stop coming and by then several weeks may have passed.

My recommendation is that you check every page your ads lead to every day. Also test forms and tracking after every change to the website.

What usually breaks

The faults can be divided into five groups.

The fault	How it usually happens	What happens
The page does not exist	New website or new addresses without redirects	Clicks land on an error page and the ad can be disapproved
The page is slow	Heavy images or new plugins on the website	Visitors leave before the page has loaded
The form does not send	An update or a new spam filter	Enquiries never arrive
Tracking stops counting	The tags are not carried over to the new website	Google Ads steers towards the wrong numbers
Consent stops working	New cookie banner or changed settings	Conversions disappear from the reports

The page does not exist

This fault often appears when the website is rebuilt. The pages get new addresses and the old ones lead to an error page. The error page is often called a 404 after the error code. What is needed is a redirect. That is a rule that sends the visitor from the old address to the new one.

Google checks pages with a crawler called AdsBot. If the crawler gets an error the ad can be disapproved with the message Destination not working. According to Google's help page on the issue this also covers pages under construction and redirect loops.

The fault is easy to miss. The page can work when you open it yourselves while Google's crawler gets an error. And when Google disapproves an ad it shows in Google Ads but not to anyone who only looks at the website.

A redirect can also drop part of the address. When auto-tagging is on Google adds a click ID called gclid to the address. That is what links the click to a conversion. Google writes that the gclid must be passed to the final landing page when the website redirects.

The page is slow

A slow page loses visitors before they have seen anything. This applies especially on mobile. According to Google's help page on Ad Rank the quality of the landing page also counts when Google works out where the ad appears.

Measure the page in PageSpeed Insights after every major change and look at the mobile result. A good measure is how long it takes before the largest content on the page appears. Google counts 2.5 seconds or less as good.

The form does not send

This is the fault that is least visible. The page looks normal and the button can be pressed but the enquiry never arrives. It can be caused by an update or a new spam filter. Sometimes the emails end up in the recipient's spam folder.

The safest way to know is to send a test yourselves. Do it every week and after every change to the website. Check that the test reaches the right inbox and that it is counted as a conversion in Google Ads.

Tracking stops counting

Tracking is the tags that tell Google Ads and Google Analytics that someone has sent a form or bought something. It often stops working when the website is rebuilt. Tag Manager is not carried over to the new website or the thank you page the conversion is counted on gets a new address.

Then it looks as if the ads have stopped delivering. If you bid towards conversions Google also gets the wrong input and adjusts the bids accordingly.

Google Ads shows a status for each conversion under Goals. There Google warns, among other things, when a conversion has not been recorded for seven days. Look there first when the numbers suddenly drop.

Consent stops working

The cookie banner decides what may be measured. Consent Mode is Google's way of receiving the visitor's choice from the banner. If the banner is replaced or the settings are changed the signals to Google can stop getting through. Conversions then fall in the reports without enquiries having become fewer.

Check with Tag Assistant that consent is sent both when the page loads and when the visitor has made their choice. Also look at the page on mobile because a cookie banner can cover the form on a small screen. What disappears from your data and why is covered in the post on Consent Mode and what disappears from your data.

How to catch the faults in time

Monitoring needs to cover every address your ads lead to. That is often more than the ones in the ads themselves because sitelinks and Performance Max have their own addresses.

1. Check every address every day. Let a script go through the final URLs in active ads and sitelinks and raise an alert when a page responds with an error. The final URL is the address the ad leads to. Google has a ready-made script called Link Checker that can run directly in the account.
2. Read the Landing pages page in Google Ads. It shows which addresses get the clicks and how they perform. An address that gets clicks but no conversions is worth opening.
3. Raise an alert when conversions fall. In Google Analytics you can create custom insights that send an email when an event falls more than expected. According to Google's help page on insights the condition can be a percentage decrease or an anomaly that Analytics detects itself.
4. Test the form every week. Send an enquiry and follow it all the way to the inbox and to the conversion in Google Ads.
5. Decide who tests after every change. Whoever changes the website should know which pages the ads lead to. Decide before the change goes live who tests addresses, forms and tracking.

This is what I look at first when an account suddenly gets fewer enquiries. If clicks are at the same level as before but conversions have fallen the fault is probably on the page or in the tracking. If clicks have fallen too the fault is more often in the account. More checkpoints like these are in the post on how we audit a Google Ads account.

A dashboard that shows enquiries per day also makes a drop visible sooner. What belongs there is covered in the post on a dashboard management actually reads.

Next steps for you

We can set up a daily check of every page your ads lead to and alerts when conversions fall. If you are rebuilding your website we go through redirects, forms and tracking before the new version goes live. Read more about our web, landing page and tracking work on our services page.

When did someone at your company last test the form your ads lead to?