PopUp Boxes
We love and hate them – the popup boxes meant to use people’s 3 second attention span against them, to rope in more leads or sales with a pattern interrupt popup box on a website’s landing page.
They are annoying af but do help increase conversions. Neil Patel does a great breakdown of one of the newest versions of popup boxes in his article here, but let’s get back to Facebook ad policies.
Ask yourself, if your lander has popup boxes if they fall under 1 of 3 categories:
• Mid-scroll popup box
• Full page popup box
• Escape capture popup boxes
This first one is pretty common – you’re scrolling down the page, perhaps right at or below the fold you see a popup box just past halfway down the page.
Facebook is ok with these, they aren’t against ad policy.
But now, let’s look at the full page popup box – a newer style of popup that Neil Patel discusses in the article linked above. Are these ok with Facebook or will they trigger a non-functional landing page flag that shuts down your ads?
Non-Functional Landing Page: The Banned Type of Popup
Well, it depends. If there is no “X” visible to close the popup box or perhaps the popup box is so full screen it requires the Facebook user to zoom out to even see the “X” (on a Macbook for example, having to press command and the minus sign to zoom out to see it), you may get flagged.
That isn’t as common though.
BUT if you have the 3rd type of popup box, the escape capture that refuses to let you leave a landing page after you’ve clicked to close that tab or window Facebook hates these.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Popup Ban Fix
That will definitely be enough to shut your ads down and brand you with the non-functional landing page flag (or not even tell you this and just give you the generic your ads promo stuff against our ad policies flag).
So how do you fix this? Stick with mid-scroll popup boxes or full page popup boxes that have a visible “X” to close them.
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Non-Functional Landing Page: Ad Sense
Your conversions depend on Facebook users not clicking away. But if the color scheme doesn’t match the ad on your lander, it can cause people to click away and increase your bounce rate. And there are Facebook policy issues here too.
Landing Pages That Don’t Match Facebook Ad
This one can be a surprising flag to get – if you’re even told specifically that this is why your Facebook ads are shut down. I’ve rarely seen people told this exact message, either it’s the non-functional landing page flag or just the generic shut down message.
This can happen for a couple of reasons. Or rather 3 reasons, and the 3rd is enough to get your entire profile banned from advertising. If you’re looking for the scoop on the top reasons that Facebook ads get rejected click here.
Your ad copy and creative are confusing and don’t match what’s on your landing page.
As mentioned above, what affects conversion rates can affect your Facebook compliance status as well. If your Facebook ad is let’s say, blue and red but your landing page has a different image and is orange and white?
Facebook users will feel this kind of unconscious uncomfortableness because they feel like they ended up on the wrong page after clicking on your CTA. For the most common Facebook ad policies explained click here.
You want to match the same color scheme and have the same image on your landing page that your Facebook ad has for conversion purposes.
But also, for Facebook ad policy purposes. Because if the landing page is so drastically different from the Facebook ad, then Facebook’s bots will give you the side eye and possibly flag you for a non-functional landing page.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Ad Sense Fix
How to fix this: make sure your landing page’s creative and color scheme matches your Facebook ad.
When Liana of Power Up Strategy hired me to audit her ads before they went live, she never got shut down again by Facebook’s bots. Want to stay protected? Schedule a discovery call here.
Non-Functional Landing Page: URLs
Now let’s discuss the website or URL you’ve entered into Ads Manager for the CTA button.
Display URLs Don’t Match Landing Page URLs
When you’re creating a Facebook ad, you gotta enter in the destination URL (if the Campaign Objective is “Traffic”) for where you’re sending Facebook users after they click on the CTA button.
You’ll also see an option for a display URL – this gets fucked up a lot when advertisers enter in a slightly different URL or a completely different URL.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Ugly URLs
If you have a really ugly-looking URL with lots of numbers combined with letters after your root domain .com/ you can shorten that to your homepage domain for the display URL.
BUT, if you enter an entirely different website URL for the display URL, you will get the flag for non-functional URL.
If these don’t match, you’ll definitely risk getting flagged for a non-functional URL.
How to fix: Make sure you either leave the display URL field blank, enter the same URL as your destination URL, or only put a small variation of your site’s homepage, in the URL address.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Dead Pages
Up next is how to address pages you may not even know about that are hurting you when Facebook’s ad policy bots scan your lander.
The 404 Factor
You’re feeling great, your CPCs are under a dollar, your conversion rates are super high and WHAM, Facebook shuts you down for having a non-functional URL and you’re like…FML. But…
Then you CHECK your website and everything is looking sweet. You click and go to your homepage it’s great. You go to the landing page and it’s great. So what gives?
If you have a landing page with a menu bar of links to other parts of your website – like a ton of different pages, and one of them doesn’t work or down for maintenance, you’ll get hit with this flag.
It’s just going to be a big ass trigger for the automations if one part of your website isn’t working.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Bot Triggers
The machines will see that one broken link and flag your entire ad for being fake or not legit. Because Facebook’s automations will basically look at your ad as leading to a 404 page that isn’t working, even if that page isn’t the one directly linked to your ad’s CTA.
So what should advertisers do to avoid getting hit with a non-functional landing page flag, and mistakenly labeled for having a not working website?
How to fix: make sure you check all your links on your website and fix any that give the 404 broken link warnings. A plugin many find useful is called “Link Checker” available for download for free in the WordPress plugin library.
Note: Link Checker can frequently mark active links as broken for a variety of reasons, you can go into the plugin’s menu on WordPress and mark links you know are working as active and Link Checker will un-cross them out on your site.
How To Get Social Proof on Facebook Ads
A lot of people running ads on Facebook want to use social proof but they can make a misstep when using Facebook Groups and Pages to do so. More on this coming up.
Non-Functional Landing Page: IP
One of the most protected brand assets Meta has, is the IP or intellectual property of the Facebook logo and symbols. Up next you’ll find out why this can get you banned and how to avoid it when sidestepping the Non-Functional Landing Page ban on Facebook.
Directing People to a Facebook Group
It may seem like an irony, but you can’t really use a Facebook ad to advertise a Facebook Group – at least not on an external landing page.
You’re likely to get flagged for trying to use Facebook’s brand assets without written permission. Also, in a way, Facebook also views this is trying to circumvent ad policies.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Copyright Infringement
Copyright infringement, especially unique to how Facebook decides to enforce this and the method they use for both flagging and discerning what is a flag is a much more extensive conversation. That would be more appropriate on a consulting call.
Non-Functional Landing Page: IP Fix
How to fix: don’t try to run Traffic ads to a page promoting your Facebook Group.
Below, you’ll read more top level tips on fixing non-functional landing pages (or regular websites mis-flagged as such).
Non-Functional Landing Page: The Blacklist
You don’t want to end up on the blacklist at Facebook, as they can coordinate invisible quarantines around you online. Coming up, I’ll help you find a solution if your website is blacklisted.
Your Website is Blocked / Blacklisted
Not mentioned in Facebook’s HelpCenter for this flag
This is one of the hardest ad policy issues to overcome because in a way it is a ban on your entire brand – but if your website is blacklisted by Facebook’s automations on Meta’s servers, you’ll also get this flag.
Which of course, won’t make any sense to you because your website is working just fine, so how is this a nonfunctional URL?
Non-Functional Landing Page: Circumventing Systems
As you may have read in my other articles like Common Facebook Ad Policy Violations [Explained] there are many header flags where the automations may display one flag for why your ad account is shut down, when in reality the flag that shut you down is completely different.
That can happen here as well.
Sometimes you may even get hit with the Circumventing Systems flag when the real flag is Non-Functional Landing Page. This makes it hard to decipher why you were banned and what to do to fix it.
You may be seeing an external flag that you have a non-functional URL but, you could be blacklisted if your competitors flag your ad’s website as spam. Or if Facebook users flagged it as spam.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Low Quality Images
You can get hit with an ad account restriction for the Non-Functional Landing Page flag if the images you use are blurry, or not HD enough for Facebook’s standards.
Or this can happen if you have been advertising products to a low quality landing page even on Shopify if the images used on Shopify are low quality.
How to fix: before you spin out on why Facebook has flagged you about a non-functional landing page, make sure your website is in good standing with Facebook. If you don’t know how to do that, I can help schedule a discovery call here.
Also, here’s my free guide on navigating Circumventing Systems flags:
Circumventing Systems Guide 2.0
Non-Functional Landing Page: Enter the Spiderverse
Hey it’s your neighborhood webslinger – internet web that is and I’ve got a friendly reminder about being in good standing with the Web of Trust:
Web of Trust
WOT Services is the developer of MyWOT (also known as WOT and Web of Trust), an online reputation and Internet safety service which shows indicators of trust about existing websites. The confidence level is based both on user ratings and on third-party malware, phishing, scam and spam blacklists.
The service also provides crowdsourced reviews, about to what extent websites are trustworthy, and respect user privacy, vendor reliability and child safety.
If your website is failing the Web of Trust’s standards you’re a lot more at risk for Facebook slapping the non-functional landing page flag on you.
Non-Functional Landing Page: WOT Fix
How to fix:make sure your website passes WOT standards.
Don’t know what WOT is? Don’t know where to start? Here are some key factors to keep in mind to make your website trustworthy for Web of Trust standards and Facebook ad policies:
• HTTPS Not HTTP
• The Domain Resembles an Established Brand
• Website Privacy Policy with Physical Address
HTTPS Not HTTP
If the URL of a website begins with “https” not “http,” it means it has passed an “SSL Certificate” (the “s” is for “secure”) — a validation that as your data passes from your browser to the website’s server, it’s secure.
However, there are levels of validation some of which are easy to crack. Domain Validation (DV), the lowest level of validation, just confirms that an organization owns a domain, and as such, requested a certificate.
It has nothing to do with its legitimacy.
Extended Validation (EV), on the other hand, offers the highest, safest, and most extensive validation level. Here the company requesting the cert has to prove their identity and that their business is legit. There used to be a green bar with a lock icon displaying this but that’s changed as Namecheap explains here.
So, make sure your landing page starts with “https” and that will help. Are your Facebook ads blocked? Click here for expert guidance.
Non-Functional Landing Page: Fake Brand Pages
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?
No one likes an imitator when the real article is available – well neither does Facebook. If you are trying to create knock off pages mimicking bigger brands you’re in for some trouble:
The Domain Resembles an Established Brand
Cybercriminals may create phishing sites that convincingly impersonate an existing websites (say the attacker uses the domain amaz0n.com, buys a DV certificate, and designs it to look exactly like amazon.com) to trick people into logging in or buying something using a variety of methods such as phishing emails.
I see that shit all the time, often in the form of “invoice” emails with fake bills for things I never purchased. Just today I got a snail mail letter about:
WOT advises to always check the domain of a site, type the intended domain name into your browser yourself, and don’t click links in emails you receive from your bank or other online vendor.
On Facebook’s side, if they see your landing page has pretend name brand characters in it like amaz0n.com or you’re trying to misappropriate Facebook’s own brand assets they’ll hit you with the non-functional landing flag.
Or even a copyright infringement flag if the automations mistake your almost-brand name URL for the real one. Jeeze! Wouldn’t it be ironic? So, yeah, don’t do that.
Website Privacy Policy with Physical Address
I can’t count the times even major companies I’ve worked with don’t have a proper privacy policy Facebook will approve on their landing page. Your landing page has to have a Privacy Policy with a physical address or you’ll be hit with the non-functional landing page Facebook flag.
And other flags.
Think about all the Shopify sales pages with knock-offs or stolen goods – or sometimes there are even fake landing pages from clickbait farms running ads on Facebook.
They do not have privacy policies. You don’t want to be grouped in with them if you want to run Facebook ads without getting shut down.
How to fix: make sure every landing page you send traffic to from Facebook ads has a privacy policy with a physical address.
How the Facebook Ad Review Process Works