False Flag Disapproved Ads

It is incredibly frustrating when Google Ads tells you a link is broken when you can click on it right now and watch the page load perfectly.

When this happens to only a few select ads, it’s usually not a universal website crash. Instead, it means Google’s automated testing bot (AdsBot-Google) encountered an issue that a regular human browser bypassed.

Here are the most common reasons why Google thinks your working URLs are broken, and how to fix them:

The Server is Blocking Google’s Bots (Most Common)

Your website might have security software, a firewall (like Cloudflare), or a plugin that is designed to block malicious bots or DDoS attacks. Sometimes, it gets aggressive and accidentally blocks Google’s ad-crawling bots, or puts up a “Cloudflare Challenge/Captcha” page.

• Why it hits only a few ads
  It often triggers if specific landing pages generate too many quick requests from the bot, causing the firewall to temporarily block just those requests.
• The Fix
  Ask your web developer or hosting provider to check the server logs for requests from AdsBot-Google or Googlebot and ensure they are explicitly whitelisted.

Geoblocking or Regional Restraints

If your website restricts access to users outside of your target country (or displays a “Not available in your region” notice), Google will reject the ad.

• The Catch
  Google crawls websites from servers located all over the world (heavily based in the US). If your ad is targeting the UK, but your website blocks US traffic, the ad will get flagged as “Destination Not Working” because the bot couldn’t open it from its US server.
• The Fix
  Ensure your website is globally accessible to bots, or at least allows IP ranges owned by Google.

Subtle Mobile Redirect Loops

Does the ad work on your desktop, but the rejected ad happens to use a different mobile tracking template? Or perhaps your site tries to aggressively redirect mobile users to a mobile-specific page (e.g., m.yoursite.com). If that redirect fails, loops, or takes too long to load, Google’s mobile crawler will fail it.

Intermittent Server Timeouts

Google’s bot is impatient. If a specific landing page has heavy unoptimized images, complex scripts, or database queries that cause it to take longer than a few seconds to respond, the bot will give up and label it “not working.” If your server experiences brief spikes in traffic, a few ads crawled during that split-second spike might get rejected while others pass.

Silent “Destination Mismatch”

Sometimes Google flags an ad as “Destination Not Working” when it actually means Destination Mismatch. Check if the few rejected ads have a trailing slash missing, use http:// instead of https://, or redirect to a slightly different URL structure than what is typed into the “Final URL” box.