After any change to your site's pages, export every sitelink and other linked extension from AdWords, open each address on a phone and a computer, and point each one at its new page directly.

The links under the ad

Sitelinks are the extra links that appear under an AdWords ad: Beginner kites, Repairs, Hours and directions. Each has its own address, set when the campaign was built.

Then the website is redesigned, or moved to a new system. Pages are renamed, merged or deleted.

The ads keep running, and the sitelinks keep pointing at the old addresses. Someone taps Repairs and lands on an error page, or on the home page with no mention of repairs.

Every one of those taps is paid for, at the same price as a click on the ad itself.

Why nobody notices

The fifth is the hardest to catch. Nothing shows an error, AdWords sees a page that loads, and Analytics records a visit, but the visitor who wanted repairs got the front door and a search to do.

What AdWords catches and what it misses

AdWords checks the pages its ads point to, and a sitelink whose page returns an error may eventually be disapproved and stop showing.

That check is not instant, and it cannot judge whether a working page is the right one. A sitelink labelled Prices that lands on the home page passes every automatic test.

So an account can look healthy for months while some of its clicks go nowhere useful.

Finding every sitelink

In AdWords, open the Ad extensions tab and choose the sitelinks view. Sitelinks can belong to a whole campaign or to single ad groups, so check both levels.

Download the list as a spreadsheet, with each sitelink's text and final URL, the address it actually sends people to. If some have a separate mobile final URL, include those.

Other extensions carry addresses too. Price extensions, new this year, give each item its own final URL, and they go stale in exactly the same way.

Checking each address

Open every final URL in a private browser window, once on a computer and once on a phone. Private windows avoid anything your own browser remembers.

For each, ask two questions: does the page load, and is it the page the sitelink's words promise?

Read any description lines under each sitelink too. A line promising free shipping over a certain amount is a claim the page must match.

Mark each one: working, broken, or pointing somewhere less useful than it should.

Analytics shows the misses

Analytics can find broken sitelinks from the other end. Filter the landing pages report to paid search visits and look for your error page, or for pages you no longer link to.

If your error page has its own title, such as Page not found, filter the All Pages report by that title and add source and medium as a second column.

A landing page that takes paid visits and sends nearly all of them straight back is worth opening too.

A worked example

A kite shop near a waterfront park sells kites, line and repair kits in its shop and online, and runs AdWords campaigns from April to September.

In March its online store moved to a new shop system and every product category got a new address. The designer redirected the main pages, and the owner updated the ads.

The sitelinks, set up two years earlier by a previous contractor, were Beginner kites, Stunt kites, Kite repairs and Find the shop.

Two pointed at old category pages and showed a page not found message. Find the shop redirected to the home page, which had the address only in its footer.

The owner found out in August from a customer at the counter. Every sitelink got a new final URL, and the old category addresses now redirect to their new equivalents.

Find the shop opens a page with a map and the hours, and the shop's checklist for site changes has gained a line: check every link in the ads.

Redirects are a safety net

Any redesign should come with a list of old addresses and their new equivalents, and permanent redirects, which tell browsers and Google a page has moved for good, from each old page to its closest match.

That protects bookmarks, links from other sites and search rankings as well as the ads.

Redirecting everything to the home page hides the error without answering the visitor.

Even so, update the sitelinks themselves. A redirect that loses the tail of an address can also lose the code AdWords attaches to each click, and Analytics then counts the paid visit as unpaid.

Sitelinks worth pointing somewhere

The check is a good moment to ask whether each sitelink earns its place.

The best ones lead to pages a searcher might choose instead of the main landing page: prices, a booking page, a location page, a popular category.

About us and Blog rarely qualify. Neither does a sitelink that repeats the ad's own destination under another name.

Make the ads part of every site change

Most broken sitelinks come from a gap between two people: the one changing the website and the one running the ads.

Before any page is renamed, moved or deleted, send the list of changes to whoever manages AdWords. After launch, they export the extensions and check them against it.

The same list catches the other places old addresses hide: the website field on your Google listing, the link on your Facebook page, and email signatures.

The counter-case

An account with three sitelinks pointing at pages that have not changed in years needs a check once a year, not after every small edit.

A site with no sitelinks at all has the opposite task, adding a few useful ones, which is a different job.

And a short campaign that ends before the redesign launches can be left alone.

For every other account, check every link in every extension after any change to the site's pages.

After the next site change

  1. Export every sitelink with its final URL.
  2. Open each address on a phone and a computer.
  3. Mark any error or unexpected home page.
  4. Point each sitelink at its new page directly.
  5. Redirect old addresses to their closest match.
  6. Check price extensions the same way.
  7. Add the ads to your site change checklist.

Step seven is what keeps it from recurring. The sitelinks broke because the people changing the site and the people running the ads never compared notes.

Checking the page itself on the phone that tapped the ad is covered in ads that send phone searchers to a desktop page.

Frequently asked questions

Why do sitelinks break after a redesign?

Each sitelink has its own address, set when the campaign was built. When pages are renamed or deleted, the main ad usually gets updated and the sitelinks do not.

Does AdWords catch broken sitelinks itself?

Sometimes, eventually. A page returning an error may be disapproved, but the check is not instant, and a redirect to the home page passes every automatic test.

How do I find every sitelink?

Open the Ad extensions tab in AdWords, choose the sitelinks view, check both campaign and ad group levels, and download the list with each final URL.

Can Analytics show sitelinks that go wrong?

Yes. Filter landing pages to paid search visits and look for your error page, or filter the All Pages report by its title with source and medium shown.

Are redirects enough on their own?

No. Redirect old addresses to their closest match, but update the sitelinks directly too. Some redirects strip the tracking code AdWords adds, so paid visits get recorded as unpaid.

What keeps sitelinks from breaking next time?

Send the list of page changes to whoever runs AdWords before launch, and add checking every extension link to the checklist for any site change.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Redesigned your site since the ads were built?

Give us access to your AdWords account. We will check every sitelink and extension against the pages that exist now.

Start a Conversation