Google Ads can bring enquiries within days. It can also spend a month's budget on clicks from people who were never going to buy. In small accounts, the money rarely leaks through one big error. It usually leaks through a handful of default settings and habits that nobody questioned.
Here are eight common ones, what Google's own documentation says about each, and what to check in your account.
1. Showing ads to people who are not in your area
Under location options, Google offers two settings. The default, which Google also recommends, reaches people who are in or regularly in your target area or who have shown interest in it. The second option, "Presence", reaches only people who are in or regularly in the area.
For a hotel or a holiday rental, interest from abroad is exactly what you want. For a plumber in Paphos, a dentist in Limassol or a restaurant, it usually is not. Someone in Manchester reading about Paphos is not going to book your boiler repair. If you serve customers on site, check this setting first.
2. Running broad match without watching the search terms
Broad match is the default match type for every keyword you add. It lets your ads show on searches related to your keyword, including searches that do not contain its words. Phrase match (in quotation marks) and exact match (in square brackets) narrow this down.
Broad match can work, but only if someone looks at what it actually matches. Open the search terms report every week at the start, then at least monthly. Two details from Google's help pages are easy to miss:
- Negative keywords do not match close variants. Excluding "job" does not exclude "jobs". Add singular, plural and synonyms yourself. Misspellings are covered automatically.
- The report does not show everything. Search terms with too little volume are left out for privacy reasons, so a clean looking report is not proof that every click was relevant.
3. Letting a Search campaign drift into other networks
A Search campaign can also show ads on the Google Display Network and on Google's search partner sites, depending on the network settings. Display placements reach people browsing websites and apps, not people actively searching for your service. Open the campaign settings, look at "Networks" and decide deliberately. If you do want display ads, a separate campaign with its own budget is easier to judge.
4. Counting the wrong things as conversions
This is the most expensive mistake, because automated bidding learns from it. Google distinguishes between primary and secondary conversion actions. Only primary actions in the goal a campaign uses appear in the "Conversions" column and steer the bidding. Secondary actions are reported under "All conversions" for observation only.
If a page view, a click on the phone number or a scroll is set as primary, the system will happily buy more of those instead of real enquiries. Check the list of primary actions, keep only what really means business (a sent form, a booking, a purchase, a qualified call), and test each one yourself with a real enquiry.
5. Leaving automatic recommendations switched on without reading them
Google Ads can apply certain recommendations to your account automatically. According to Google, these include adding broad match keywords, removing keywords it considers redundant and changing bid strategies. For a small account with a clear focus, that can quietly change how the budget is spent.
Open "Recommendations", then the auto-apply settings, and decide which types you really want applied without review. Google states that you can switch this on or off at any time and review the queue of upcoming changes.
6. Changing the bid strategy every few days
Automated bid strategies need time and stable signals. Google says the learning period never lasts more than seven days and is triggered by a new strategy, by adding or removing campaigns or keywords from it, or by a significant change to the conversion goals. Changes to budget or targets do not restart it.
Google also advises against several target changes within one conversion cycle. If a customer usually enquires a week after the first click, judging the strategy after two days tells you very little. Make one change, note the date, and wait.
7. Weak ads and the wrong landing page
A responsive search ad can hold up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90 characters. Do not stop at three or four generic headlines. Write headlines that mention the service, the place, a concrete benefit and a reason to contact you now. Google does not recommend pinning headlines for most advertisers, because it limits the combinations and can lower Ad Strength.
Then send the click to the page that answers the search. Someone searching for "air conditioning service Paphos" should land on that service, not on the home page. Quality Score helps here as a diagnostic: Google rates expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience on a scale from 1 to 10. It is not an input in the auction itself, but a low score shows where ad and page do not fit the search.
8. Ignoring consent in Europe
If people in the European Economic Area visit your website, Google requires you to collect their consent for the use of personal data and to pass those consent signals to Google. Consent mode version 2 does this with two signals, one for sending user data for advertising and one for personalised advertising. If the signals are missing, you risk losing conversion data and remarketing audiences for these visitors. A cookie banner alone is not enough if it does not send these signals.
Quick checklist
- Location option set to "Presence" if you serve customers locally
- Search terms reviewed weekly at the start, then at least monthly
- Negative keywords with singular, plural and synonyms
- Network settings of each Search campaign checked
- Only real enquiries, bookings and sales set as primary conversions, each tested
- Auto-applied recommendations reviewed and limited to what you want
- Bid strategy changes logged with date, one at a time
- Ads with enough headlines, each sending clicks to the matching page
- Consent banner that passes consent mode signals to Google
Setting up and checking campaigns like this is part of our paid advertising service, and our analytics and reporting work makes sure the conversions behind the bidding are real. If you sell products, read our guide to Google Merchant Center for online shops as well.