On this page:

The URL Checker tool checks for broken landing pages with 404 errors, or with any piece of text that indicates a product is out of stock.

Note: This tool is currently available for Google Ads and Microsoft Ads accounts.

This tool is created from the concept of the Check Destination URL Script and modified into its own tool to avoid script timeout. We all know that Google Ads has a limit on scripts, so if your account is very large, the script will time out without checking all the URLs.

With the URL Checker tool, you can schedule URL checks and avoid the limit issues altogether, as this is completely an in-house solution and therefore not dependent on any external systems/services.

You'll find the tool under the Monitoring tab > Landing Page Monitoring > Landing Page URL Checker or via this link.

The landing page will list all the previously created settings with their corresponding IDs, names, scope, and action buttons to either edit, duplicate, or delete them.

To get started with a new setting, press the +ADD SETTING button. This will open a side tray that will allow you to start with the basic settings.

On this first window, you’ll be able to name the setting and specify if you want the tool to check for broken URLs for ads, keywords, sitelinks, and/or Performance Max Asset Groups.

You can then select whether you’d like the tool to just generate a report by running it on 'Preview mode' or if you’d like the tool to automatically make changes to the Google Ads account by running it on 'Apply mode'.

Once you have decided how to run the setting, the next step is to select the options based on which changes will be applied or a report will be generated.

When running the setting on 'Apply mode', the tool will pause ads, keywords, or asset groups (in the case of PMax) in the Google Ads account based on the selected options.

However, when running on 'Preview mode', a report with a list of all the entities with broken URLs will be generated, but no changes will be made.

The 'Do not apply changes to certain URLs' option allows you to specify custom text which will be checked against the URLs. Changes (pausing/enabling) will be only applied to the entities associated with the URLs that contain or do not contain the specified text.

As shown in the screenshot above, if the system finds any URLs that contain the words 'pricing' or 'products' it will not pause/enable entities associated with those URLs. For instance, URLs like 'www.optmyzr.com/pricing' and 'www.optmyzr.com/products' will not be paused even if the system detects that they lead to broken landing pages.

Next up, you'll see additional settings. This includes:

Campaign name includes/excludes: Not case sensitive. You can, for example, just run a setting for all your brand campaigns by including the brand name in this field (if your campaigns have a brand name in their name)

Minimum clicks required for keywords and ads: This will check the URLs associated with ads and keywords that have gotten a minimum amount of clicks.

Text to Monitor: You can monitor texts on your landing pages using this option and get notified for landing pages with a particular text in them, like “not found”, “Product not available”, etc.

Check special response codes: Monitor additional response codes other than 404.

You can also choose from other options like checking entities with zero impressions, mobile URLs, and wrapped URLs, among others.

By default, the system only checks for entities (ads, keywords, and Sitelinks) that have impressions greater than zero. The 'Include entities which have zero impressions' option allows you to take action or report upon broken URLs that have not received any clicks. However, since asset groups in a PMax campaign do not provide clicks/impressions data, they are excluded from this option.

In the last step, you’ll be able to set a schedule for the tool to run and specify your notification preferences.

Spreadsheet URL: You can get the report on a new spreadsheet every time by leaving "NEW" in this field. The spreadsheet with results will be shared with the emails mentioned in the previous step, along with the user email who set up the setting.

If you want your results to populate on a specific spreadsheet, you can share it with: automation@optmyzr-automation.iam.gserviceaccount.com and then add it to the setting.

You can have the tool send you and your teammates email notifications. All you have to do is enter the email address that should be notified.

You can choose to have the tool send you a notification each time it runs with its findings or send you a notification only if it encounters errors, for this, you can choose to be notified on any errors or just on specific ones.