MoreFromClicks
Sample Ad Waste Teardown · anonymised — a real one names the business, privately, to them

An Emergency Plumbing Advertiser — Atlanta, GA

A real, live plumbing advertiser (identity withheld in this public sample) · · mobile-first (that's where emergency clicks come from)

37
Mobile speed /100
42.4 s
Main content loaded (LCP)
1
Phone numbers shown
0.098
Layout shift
3.8/10
Our rubric score

Dollar figures below are estimates from published Atlanta-market CPC ranges for this trade — clearly labeled, never claimed as actual spend unless our data includes it.

Where the clicks leak

1 · The page loads for almost a minute on a phone

Someone with a burst pipe is clicking this ad from a phone with a weak signal, and the main content (LCP) doesn't finish rendering until 42.4 seconds in our measured run, with first paint (FCP) at 33.6 seconds — meaning the screen sits blank for over half a minute before anything shows, then keeps assembling for another 9 seconds. The page also ships 9.9MB. Most emergency searchers won't wait; they'll call the next result instead.

At $30-80 CPC (est., from lead data), every abandoned click before the page paints is spend with zero chance of a call — a handful of lost clicks a day adds up fast.
Evidence: Lighthouse mobile (PageSpeed Insights API): perf score 37, LCP 42.4s, FCP 33.6s, TBT 620ms, total bytes 9,910,272.

2 · Nav has 85 links and 222 links total on an emergency page

This is a plumbing-emergency page, not a homepage, but it carries a full site menu (85 nav links, 222 links total) plus 8 buttons including generic ones. That gives a panicked visitor dozens of ways to wander off before they call. Google's own playbook treats this kind of competing navigation as a direct tax on the one action you want — the phone call.

Every visitor who clicks into the nav instead of calling is a paid click that didn't convert — on $30-80 CPC (est.) that's real money leaking per session.
Evidence: google_framework scan: nav_links 85, total_links 222, button_count 8.

3 · Three of the on-page buttons say "Submit"

The scan found three separate "Submit" buttons on this page — a generic label Google names directly as a conversion killer because it tells the visitor nothing about what happens next. On an emergency page, a button should say something like "Get a plumber now," not the default form-builder text.

Weak button copy quietly lowers form completion; on a $30-80 CPC keyword (est.), that's wasted spend on visitors who reached the form but didn't finish it.
Evidence: google_framework scan: generic_cta_text ["Submit", "Submit", "Submit"]; buttons_found lists three "Submit" entries.

4 · Forms are backed by a CAPTCHA and multiple form instances

The page has 3 forms and a reCAPTCHA gate. A CAPTCHA in front of an emergency contact form adds friction at the exact moment someone wants speed, and the rubric treats CAPTCHA walls as a known drop-off point.

Each stalled form submission on a $30-80 CPC click (est.) is spend without a lead.
Evidence: scan: forms: 3, recaptcha: true, form_fields_sample includes reCAPTCHA/anti-spam fields (ct_checkjs, apbct__email_id__gravity_form).

5 · No sticky call button and no review schema

The phone number appears as a tel: link (good), but there's no sticky/pinned call button noted by the scan, so on a long, slow-loading page the number may not stay in reach as someone scrolls. Separately, star ratings show (4.0, per trust signals) but there's no review schema or testimonial section, so the trust signal is thinner than it could be right where people decide to call.

Minor drag on call rate; hard to size precisely without a rate baseline, so not included in the dollar range above.
Evidence: google_framework: sticky_cta false, review_schema false, testimonial_section false, star_rating_visible true; scan.trust.google_rating: 4, reviews: 36.

What’s already right — credit where due

The phone number setup is genuinely solid: one number, real tap-to-call links, used consistently across the page. The headline also speaks directly to the emergency search intent, which is exactly what should happen in the first screen. These are the two hardest things to get right in this vertical, and this page has them.

What we’d fix first

  1. Week 1: the top two findings above — biggest dollars, fastest ships. First fix live within seven days.
  2. Weeks 2–4: the remainder of the list, each with a before/after measurement against your own numbers.
  3. Then: a dedicated landing page per money keyword, testing rotation, and a monthly competitor watch — the compounding phase.

What this costs every day it stays like this

≈ $30–$90 a day

Put conservatively, the leaks above waste an estimated $900–$2,700 a month at market CPC ranges. That's not a scare number — it's the same arithmetic as the findings, added up. The meter runs whether or not anyone fixes the page, because the ad spend doesn't stop.

You could fix this yourself. Genuinely.

This report is yours — hand it to your web guy tonight, no hard feelings. Here's what owners usually discover: the repairs above are the first month of the work, not the work. What actually moves the number over a season:

Your web guy is good at websites. This is a different trade: making paid clicks pay. It's the only trade we're in.

One plumbing company per metro at a time — and the Atlanta slot was open as of .

We work with one company per metro at a time and never with two competitors in the same market — thirty clients total, nationwide. Whoever takes Atlanta gets the compounding; everyone else in the metro competes with it.

Book 20 minutes — the agenda's published Prefer to start smaller? The teardown is free — this page is what it looks like.

Method & fairness: Scored against our rubric, which incorporates Google’s own UX Playbook for Landing Pages. Reviewed from publicly available materials only: the live page (mobile emulation, Lighthouse 12 performance audit, simulated throttling) and page source. Ad activity inferred from installed call-tracking and ad-platform tags; keyword-level spend not verified. All dollar figures are estimates from published Atlanta-market CPC ranges for this trade, labeled as such. This public sample is anonymised. Every teardown we deliver goes privately to the business it describes.

Prepared by More From Clicks · morefromclicks.com ·