This is usually the question people ask after something more serious has already happened. Leads slowed down. Emails stopped coming in, or the phone went quiet.

From what we see across hundreds of thousands of websites, this rarely starts with WordPress itself. It starts when giant companies like Google make changes. Here's a good example of how one of its services works, and then just stops working.

Google is always a changin'. And when your site is not actively maintained, those changes hit functionality first, not rankings.

What actually breaks when Google changes the rules

Most people assume that Google changes only affect search results. That is wrong.

Google controls tools and services that websites depend on to function. Spam protection, security validation, and service access all live outside your site. When those rules change, the connection breaks.

Your pages still load. Your traffic still shows up. But the systems behind your forms stop responding the way they used to.

That is why failure feels invisible.

The silent failure pattern we see over and over

This is the pattern almost every time.

Someone fills out a form. They click submit. Nothing obvious goes wrong. But no message is delivered.

From the visitor's side, the site feels unreliable. From the business owner's side, nothing raises an alarm. The breakdown lives in the middle, where no one is watching.

This is why people end up searching things like why their WordPress site stopped producing inquiries instead of noticing an error right away.

How Google reCAPTCHA quietly caused widespread form failures

For years, Google offered free reCAPTCHA. It became the default choice for WordPress forms. Millions of sites were built assuming it would always work the same way.

Then Google switched away from being free.

Google has made significant changes to its reCAPTCHA payment policy, transitioning it from a mostly free service to a tiered, paid model under Google Cloud, effective by the end of 2025. The major shift involves migrating all keys to Google Cloud, reducing the free tier, and introducing paid, usage-based tiers.

Key Changes to reCAPTCHA Policy (2024-2025):

• Drastically Reduced Free Tier: The free monthly validation limit has been significantly lowered from roughly 1,000,000 to just 10,000 assessments per month.
• New Tiered Pricing Structure:
  • Essentials (Free): Up to 10,000 assessments per month
  • Standard: $8 per month for 10,000 - 100,000 assessments
  • Enterprise: $1 per 1,000 assessments for usage over 100,000 per month
• Mandatory Migration: All reCAPTCHA keys must be migrated to a Google Cloud project to avoid service disruptions.
• Billing Required for High Usage: If usage exceeds 10,000 assessments per month, you must enable billing on your Google Cloud project.
• Over-quota Behavior: If the 10,000 free limit is exceeded and no billing is enabled, the API will fail open (returning a success score of 0.9) to prevent blocking valid users, but this indicates a need to pay.

What You Need to Do:

• Monitor Usage: Determine if your site exceeds 10,000 monthly assessments
• Migrate Keys: Move existing reCAPTCHA keys to a Google Cloud project before the end of 2025 to avoid disruptions
• Set Up Billing: If your usage is high, prepare to set up a Google Cloud billing account

When Google got rid of its free captcha, these forms stopped working. The CAPTCHA functionality failed, which caused all these forms to stop working. Sites that were never updated kept showing a CAPTCHA, but submissions no longer passed through.

The result was simple. Users could not get in touch.

No warning from Google. No notice inside WordPress. Just lost submissions.

A simple repair would be to either go pay Google, which is what they want, so your captcha works again, or you go out and find another free third-party system, one, for example, like Cloudflare Turnstile.

Why traffic stays the same, but leads disappear

This is where businesses get misled.

When submissions stop, owners assume interest dropped or competition increased. In reality, people are still trying to reach them.

They are just failing and moving on.

A broken form does not show up in analytics as a drop-off. It shows up as silence.

That is why this issue costs more than a ranking dip. Rankings recover. Missed leads do not.

Where SEO and website functionality actually overlap

This is the part most SEO providers ignore.

Traffic is only valuable if it can convert. Real SEO includes making sure the paths Google sends users down actually work.

That means checking form delivery, validation, and third-party dependencies after updates roll out.

This is why our SEO service focuses on more than keywords. It ties visibility to functionality so traffic does not die at the point of contact.

Search visibility without a working site is wasted time spent.

If you rely on ongoing SEO to generate leads, keeping your forms functional is as important as your rankings.

If you are investing in broader campaigns and digital marketing strategies to grow your business, a broken form means you are paying to send visitors into a dead end instead of a live conversation.

Making sure your contact forms, quote forms, and lead capture mechanisms work correctly should be a core part of your web development and technical SEO workflow, not an afterthought.

What to check right now if your site stopped getting inquiries

Do not speculate. Test.

Open your website. Submit the form yourself. Try it on mobile and desktop. Check that a confirmation appears. Confirm the message actually arrives.

If it does not, the problem is already costing you opportunities.

Google will keep changing whether you are ready or not.

If you think this is the last time Google will change something that affects your site, it will not be.

Google adjusts pricing, access, and technical requirements constantly. They make all kinds of changes. And guess what? They don't notify everybody and say we decided to do something that could radically affect your website.

We're not saying Google's the only one that could do it. There are many third-party systems and things out there that people weave and embed into their site, and all of a sudden, one could stop working and be detrimental to your lead generation or your placement.

Another example of their changing services: we've all enjoyed using the Google map location on our websites. This, too, is now a billable service. Should you want to have this thing still on your site, you must now pay Google for its use.

You need to keep an eye on things. Sites that are not monitored fall behind without realizing it.

If you want your site checked so Google changes are not quietly costing you leads, call +1 805 243 8321.

We catch the problems that never show up as alerts.

If you prefer to have an expert team regularly monitor your forms, your tracking, and your technical issues, you can also contact us directly and have your site professionally audited for hidden failures.