15 Google Ads mistakes that can waste your budget

Most Google Ads accounts run by the business owner make the same handful of mistakes, because Google's defaults quietly steer you into them and nothing in the interface tells you when you have. None of these need an expert to fix. They need someone to know they are there.

1. Trusting a conversion count you never tested

The account says 40 conversions. Your inbox says 12 enquiries. One of them is wrong, and it is usually the account: duplicate actions, a page-view counted as a lead, a tag that fires on every visit. Every bid, budget and keyword decision since was made on that number. Test your own form and reconcile the two before you change anything else.

2. Leaving Search partners and Display on

Both are ticked when you create a Search campaign. Search partners puts your ads on other search sites; Display puts them on random web pages. Both spend. Few small businesses want either.

3. Targeting people "interested in" your area

Google's default location setting includes anyone who searched about your town, from anywhere. For a local business that means paying for clicks from people planning a holiday, writing an essay or comparing house prices. Set it to people in your area.

4. Running broad match without the data to steer it

Broad match lets Google show your ad for searches it decides are related. With strong conversion data and Smart Bidding, it can find customers you would not have thought of. Without them, it finds everything else. New accounts should start with phrase and exact match.

5. Never reading the search terms report

The report shows what people typed. If you have never opened it, there are terms in there you would be embarrassed to have paid for. Read it weekly, add negatives, repeat.

6. Having no negative keywords

Free, cheap, jobs, salary, course, DIY, the names of competitors, the towns you do not serve. An account with an empty negative list is paying for all of them.

7. Sending every click to the home page

The ad promised emergency repairs; the home page is about the company's history. The visitor leaves. A landing page that matches the search, with the price, the area and the form above the fold, converts several times better than a general page.

8. One ad per ad group, written once, never touched

Google rates responsive search ads from Poor to Excellent, and weaker ads pay more per click and show less often. Give each ad group an ad with plenty of distinct headlines and descriptions, and check its rating.

9. Running ads when nobody can answer

An enquiry at 11pm that waits until morning has often gone elsewhere by then. Set an ad schedule around the hours you actually respond, or lower bids outside them.

10. Changing bids and budgets every day

Smart Bidding needs a period of stable settings to learn. Owners who adjust something daily keep it in a permanent learning state and never see what it can do. Make a change, then leave it alone for a week or two.

11. Pausing in week two

The first weeks of any campaign are uneven, by design: Google is working out who to show the ads to. Many accounts are paused in week two, just before they settle. Give a new campaign three weeks before judging it.

12. Letting Google apply its own recommendations

The "auto-apply recommendations" setting lets Google add keywords, expand targeting and change bids on its own. Some suggestions are sound; many spend more. Turn it off and review recommendations by hand.

13. Starving the best campaign

When the campaign that brings enquiries is "limited by budget" and a campaign that brings nothing is not, money is sitting in the wrong place. Move it, and check the budget split monthly.

14. Ignoring Quality Score

A low score on your main keywords means Google thinks your ad and page are a poor match for the search, and charges you more per click than a competitor with a higher one. Fix the ad copy and the landing page before raising bids.

15. Leaving disapproved ads and broken forms unnoticed

A disapproved ad is an ad group doing nothing. A landing page form that stopped working is a campaign buying clicks that cannot become enquiries. Both are silent. Turn on Google's email alerts, and submit your own form once a week.

The pattern

Ten of the fifteen are defaults or neglect: things Google switched on, or things nobody switched off. That is good news, because it means the fix is a settings pass and a weekly habit, not a new strategy. The audit checklist covers the settings pass in 25 points.

For the weekly habit, the free check below is the place to start: it shows what would be fixed first on your account, and the full audit prices every mistake above in dollars a month.