Last verified: 2026-10-27 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/the-landing-page-nobody-told-me-about-fo
This page answers the questions covered by the article Day 11: The Landing Page That Undid a Google Ads Launch on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, a new Google Ads campaign can look stable in week one and then break on day 11 when an unlogged landing-page change alters the post-click experience. In the article's composite launch, average CPC rose from $4.10 to $5.52 and Quality Score fell from 7 to 4 after a Thursday-night template push moved the form and broke conversion tracking. The article recommends restoring the original service pages, restricting Primary conversions to qualified calls, and judging CPA against a written target after 30 days of clean signal.
According to groas, the practitioner rule is one week to one month to exit learning, with 15 conversions in 30 days as a minimum and 30 to 50 a month for best results. The article reports 11 conversions in the first seven days on $840 of spend at $120 a day, which was enough to keep watching but not enough to declare victory.
Read more: Scene 2: Days 3–7, when doing less felt harder
The article describes a launch with one ad group per service, two responsive search ads per group, exact and phrase match structure, and a starter negative list of about 80 terms around jobs, free, DIY and how-to queries. During the Google Ads learning period it advises buying data on Maximize Clicks with a cap, adding negatives from the Search Terms report, fixing only visible ad-to-page mismatches, and avoiding bid, budget, targeting or creative changes that can disrupt learning.
Read more: Scene 2: Days 3–7, when doing less felt harder
The article states that on Monday morning average CPC on the money keywords had climbed from $4.10 to $5.52, impression share lost to rank was up nine points, and two keywords had gone from Quality Score 7 to 4. According to groas, bids and budget were untouched since day four and Change History showed only negative additions and two headline fixes, because the cause was outside the ads account: a Thursday-night site template push that changed the headline, slowed the page, and placed the lead form two scrolls down below an auto-playing brand video.
Read more: Scene 4: The page nobody logged
The article recommends rolling the service pages back so the headline matched the ad, the phone number sat in the header, the form was above the fold, and the video played on click instead of auto-playing. It also recommends stripping Primary status back to the qualified-call event and retesting with a live submission, after the redesign had left a button-click event marked Primary for two days. After those fixes, Quality Score climbed from 4 to 6 in six days then to 7 the following week, CPC fell from $5.52 to $4.35, and by day 28 CPA sat 22% below day 10.
Read more: Scene 5: Weeks 3–4, getting back to the original promise
The article recommends writing three lines before spending: Target: 25 qualified calls a month at $92 CPA; Definition: A qualified call comes from a homeowner in the service area asking for a date; Change rule: 48 hours’ notice before a page publish and every site edit recorded in the same shared log as ads edits. It places that agreement inside a 90-day clock: thirty days to buy clean signal, then sixty days to judge CPA against the written target.
Read more: Coda: The sheet I would write before spending a dollar
[1] https://groas.com/post/the-landing-page-nobody-told-me-about-fo (the article this page answers from)