Why your Google Ads are burning money

An unmanaged Google Ads account does not sit still. It spends, and the defaults are set to spend broadly.

Log into your account — yours, which you should own — and work through these.

1. No negative keywords

Where to look: Campaigns → Insights and reports → Search terms. This shows what people actually typed, as opposed to what you bid on.

You will almost certainly find searches containing “free”, “cheap”, “jobs”, “salary”, “courses”, “how to”, “DIY”, and competitor names. Every one of those cost you a click.

Add them as negative keywords. On a neglected account this alone often recovers 15 to 30 per cent of spend.

2. Broad match left unsupervised

Broad match lets Google show your ad for anything it considers related. It is Google’s default recommendation and it is excellent for Google’s revenue.

Used deliberately with a strong negative list and conversion tracking, it works. Used as a default on a small budget with neither, it spends your money on adjacent searches that will never convert.

3. Conversion tracking is not set up

Where to look: Goals → Conversions. If it is empty, or everything says “no recent conversions”, nothing is being measured.

This is the most expensive item on the list. Without conversion data Google’s bidding optimises for clicks, because clicks are the only outcome it can see. You will get more traffic and fewer customers, and every report will look fine.

Phone calls especially. If people ring rather than fill in the form — which is most trades — and calls are not tracked as conversions, the campaign is flying blind on your main lead source.

4. Every ad goes to the homepage

Someone searches “blocked drain Newtown”, clicks your ad, and lands on a homepage listing eleven services. They now have to find the relevant one themselves, and a meaningful share will not.

Each ad group should point at a page about that specific thing. It lifts conversions and it lowers your cost per click, because Google charges less when the landing page matches the search.

5. Location settings include the whole country

Where to look: Campaign settings → Locations → Location options.

The default includes people “interested in” your location, not just people in it. That means someone in Perth researching Sydney plumbers can trigger your ad. Change it to “Presence: people in or regularly in your targeted locations”.

This one setting is a frequent and invisible cause of waste, and it takes thirty seconds to fix.

6. Auto-applied recommendations are switched on

Where to look: Recommendations → Auto-apply.

Google can automatically add keywords, change match types and adjust budgets on your behalf. The recommendations optimise for Google’s definition of account health, which is not identical to yours.

Turn off auto-apply. Read the recommendations, take the good ones deliberately.

7. Ads run 24/7 when you do not

If nobody answers the phone at 11pm and your form replies next morning, late-night clicks convert far worse. Check the hourly performance report before acting — for emergency trades the opposite is true and nights are the best money you spend.

The point is to look rather than assume.

A half-hour audit

1. 01Search terms report — read the last fifty, add negatives.
2. 02Goals → Conversions — confirm calls and forms are both tracked, and have fired recently.
3. 03Location options — set to Presence.
4. 04Recommendations → Auto-apply — turn off.
5. 05Check where each ad group points. Homepage for everything is a problem.
6. 06Look at the hourly and day-of-week report before changing schedules.