Google Ads had a bug with the sitelinks creation page, where the prefill functionality was not working right. Google confirmed the issue and said it was "very limited and was not widespread."
The issue was reported by Chris Brewer who posted on LinkedIn showing how Google was prefilling in his competitor's URLs into the sitelinks. He wrote, "Just uncovered something wild—Google auto-generating sitelinks that recommend competitor landing pages in our ads." "This could mean ad dollars unknowingly funneling traffic to competitors—a huge risk for brands running automated sitelinks. If you're using them, double-check ASAP," he added.
Here is a screenshot he shared:
Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liason, wrote in response a week later, that "The team has investigated and this was due to an issue with our prefill functionality that provides suggestions for review on the Sitelink creation page."
She explained that "This issue did not impact dynamic sitelinks or other automatically generated asset functionality."
Adding it was not a widespread issue, "It appears to have been very limited and was not widespread."
Did you notice this with your ad accounts?
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
