How to find wasted spend in Google Ads: a step-by-step guide

Every Google Ads account leaks. The question is only how much, and where. A small business running its own account for a year will usually find that a meaningful share of the budget went on searches that were never going to become customers, hours nobody could answer, and places the business does not serve. None of it shows up as a line called "waste". You have to go and find it.

Here is where to look, in the order that finds the biggest amounts first.

Step 1: check that the count is real

Before you judge anything as waste, make sure the account knows what a customer looks like. Open Goals, then Conversions, and confirm there is an action for a real enquiry: a form send, a booking request, a purchase. Submit your own form and check that it appears.

If conversions are not being counted, every report below will mislead you, because a keyword that "never converts" may simply be a keyword whose conversions were never recorded. Fix this first.

Step 2: read the search terms report

This is the single biggest source of waste in most accounts. Under Insights and reports, open Search terms. It lists what people actually typed before they clicked your ad, which is often nothing like the keywords you chose.

Sort by cost. Then read down the list asking one question of each line: could this person have become a customer? "Plumber salary", "free plumbing course", "plumber in a town you do not serve" cannot. Add each of those as a negative keyword, and if several share a word, add the word.

Do this for the longest date range the report allows. A term that cost $12 this week has cost $600 over a year. The search terms guide covers the report in detail.

Step 3: look at where the clicks came from

Under Locations, switch the view to show user location. Compare it with where you actually work. Common findings: a city with the same name in another state, a neighbouring area you quoted once and never again, and searches from far away by people who were reading about your town rather than standing in it.

The fix for the last one is a setting. In campaign settings, under Locations, change the location option from "presence or interest" to "presence". It is the default, and it is wrong for almost every local business.

Step 4: look at when the clicks came

Under When and where ads showed, open the day and hour view. You are looking for money spent at times you cannot respond, and for days where the cost per enquiry is far above the rest.

If you answer the phone and reply to forms between eight and six on weekdays, ads running at midnight are buying enquiries that sit unanswered until the person has booked someone else. Add an ad schedule, or lower bids outside your hours if you want some presence.

Step 5: check which devices are paying off

Under Devices, compare cost per conversion on phones, desktops and tablets. For most local businesses, phones carry the enquiries. Tablets often carry clicks and nothing else. A large gap is a sign to adjust bids by device, or to look at whether the landing page works on the device that is underperforming.

Step 6: find the ads that spend without earning

In the Ads table, add the columns for cost, conversions and ad strength. Ads marked Poor or Average, and ads that have spent for weeks without a conversion while their neighbours in the same ad group convert, are costing you twice: once in the clicks they take and once in the higher price Google charges weaker ads.

Check Status at the same time. A disapproved ad spends nothing, but it also earns nothing while its ad group sits empty.

Step 7: check the two settings that spend quietly

In each Search campaign's settings, under Networks, look at Search partners and Display Network. Both are on by default. Search partners shows your ads on sites other than Google, often at worse quality. Display Network puts text ads on random websites. Unless you chose them on purpose, switch both off. In many accounts this alone recovers a noticeable share of spend.

Putting a number on it

Add up the cost of the search terms you added as negatives, the clicks from outside your area, the clicks outside your hours, and the spend on search partners and display. That total, per month, is what the account was wasting. Most owners who do this exercise for the first time are surprised, and then annoyed, which is the right order.

The second thing most owners discover is that the leaks come back. New search terms appear every week; Google changes defaults; a campaign copied from another inherits its settings. Finding waste is not a task, it is a habit, which is why most accounts either have someone doing it weekly or have software doing it. The 25-point audit checklist is the full version of this exercise.

The free check below is the fast version: paste your website, see what would be fixed first, and if you connect the account, every fault above is found and priced in dollars a month.