Your Domain Is Up. Your Funnel Is Dead. Here's How to Tell the Difference.

A friend dropped an issue in a mastermind group I'm in today.

His domain loads fine.

But the specific URL he's running ads to.. HTTP errors, page never loads, total mess.

Here's how to diagnose it yourself in about 60 seconds.

Open Chrome. Go to the broken URL. Before the page loads, hit F12 (or right-click anywhere and choose "Inspect"). That opens Chrome DevTools.

Click the Network tab. Then reload the page.

You'll see every HTTP request the browser makes listed out. Look for the first one.. the one that matches your URL. Click it. Look at the Headers panel on the right.

Two things to check:

Status code. A redirect shows as 301 or 302. That means the server is saying "don't stay here.. go somewhere else." If you see a chain of these bouncing back and forth.. that's a redirect loop. The browser eventually gives up.

Location header. This tells you exactly where the server is trying to send you next. If it's sending you back to where you just came from.. you've found your loop.

In my friend's case.. HTTP was redirecting to HTTPS.. and HTTPS was redirecting back to HTTP. Infinitely. Most likely a misconfigured redirect rule. Either scoped to that specific URL or a wildcard match catching it by accident.

His domain is "up." His funnel is dead.

Here's the strategy most operators miss: "is my site up?" is the wrong question. The right question is "is every URL my traffic lands on actually delivering a page?" Domain uptime is a proxy. URL-level redirect health is the real signal.

After keeping web apps up and healthy for 25+ years.. here's something I believe:

The system you don't observe degrades by default.

Entropy wins when nothing is watching. A redirect rule that worked last month catches a new URL pattern this month. Nobody notices. Traffic keeps flowing. Conversions disappear.

I call this Funnel Rot.

You gotta keep your eyes on this stuff.

Because "the domain works" and "the funnel works" are not the same question. And the answer to the second one requires something that's actually watching.

🚀

- James

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