I audit a lot of Google Ads accounts. Some are managed by agencies, some by in-house teams, some by business owners who set things up themselves and hoped for the best. The problems I find are remarkably consistent. Most underperforming accounts aren't broken in some mysterious way. They're broken because of a handful of common mistakes that are all fixable.
Last month I looked at an account for a North Wales legal services business that had been running for five months with no results. The owner was convinced Google Ads simply didn't work for their sector. Within 20 minutes I'd found three of the seven issues below: no conversion tracking, broad match keywords with no negatives, and ads pointing to the homepage rather than a specific service page. None of those problems required any budget increase to fix.
If your campaigns are spending money but not generating leads or sales, work through this list. At least one of these issues is almost certainly affecting your account.
1. You have no conversion tracking
This is the single most common problem I find. It's also the most damaging. Without conversion tracking, you have no idea which keywords, ads, or campaigns are generating actual business results. You can see clicks and impressions, but you can't see what happens after someone clicks. Did they fill in a form? Call you? Buy something? Without tracking, you don't know.
It gets worse. Google's Smart Bidding strategies use conversion data to decide how much to bid and when. If there's no conversion data feeding back, Smart Bidding has nothing to optimise towards. It's guessing. And it guesses badly.
The fix: set up conversion tracking properly before you do anything else. At minimum, track form submissions, phone calls, and purchases. Use Google Tag Manager to implement the tags, and verify they're firing correctly using Tag Assistant. I've written extensively about the cost of not using conversion tracking because it really is the foundation everything else depends on.
2. You're using the wrong keyword match types
Match types control which searches trigger your ads. Get them wrong and you'll show up for searches that have nothing to do with your business. This is one of the fastest ways to burn through budget.
Broad match, which is Google's default, will show your ads for searches that Google considers related to your keyword. That definition of "related" is generous. A broad match keyword like "accountant" could trigger your ad for searches about accounting software, accounting degree courses, or accountant jokes. None of those people want to hire an accountant.
The fix: review your search terms report (Insights > Search terms in Google Ads). If half the searches are irrelevant, your match types are too loose. For most small business accounts, phrase match gives a good balance between reach and relevance. Exact match is best for your highest-intent terms. Broad match can work, but only when paired with Smart Bidding and solid conversion data. Without those, it's a budget drain. The changes to match types over the years have made this more complicated, so it's worth understanding how they actually behave now.
3. You have no negative keywords
Negative keywords tell Google which searches you don't want to appear for. Without them, your ads will show for irrelevant queries, and you'll pay for every click. I've seen accounts spending 30-40% of their budget on completely irrelevant traffic simply because no one had added negative keywords.
A solicitor advertising "family law services" without negative keywords might show up for "family law degree," "family law jobs," or "free family law advice." Those clicks cost real money and produce zero leads.
The fix: go to your search terms report and add every irrelevant search as a negative keyword. Then build a proactive negative keyword list for your industry. Terms like "free," "jobs," "salary," "courses," "DIY," and "how to" are common negatives for service businesses. Review search terms weekly for the first month, then fortnightly once the list is solid. I covered the full process in my post on how negative keywords stop wasted spend.
4. Your landing pages aren't converting
You can have the best ads and the tightest keyword targeting in the world, and it won't matter if the page people land on doesn't do its job. A landing page needs to match the intent of the search, load quickly, work perfectly on mobile, and make it obvious what the visitor should do next.
Sending paid traffic to your homepage is almost always a mistake. Your homepage serves multiple purposes for multiple audiences. A landing page should serve one purpose for one audience: convert the person who just searched for a specific thing.
The fix: create dedicated landing pages for your main campaign themes. Each page should have a clear headline that matches the ad copy, a concise explanation of what you offer, social proof, and a prominent call to action. Remove navigation menus and distractions. Test your page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights. Anything above 3 seconds on mobile is costing you conversions.
5. Your campaign structure is a mess
Bad structure is harder to spot than bad keywords, but it causes just as many problems. The most common issue is cramming too many unrelated keywords into one ad group. When an ad group contains keywords for different services, the ads can't be specific to any of them. Your Quality Score drops, your CPC rises, and your CTR falls.
The fix: each ad group should contain a tightly themed set of keywords relating to one specific service or intent. If you're a plumber, don't put "emergency plumber," "boiler installation," and "bathroom fitting" in the same ad group. Those need three separate ad groups with ads written specifically for each one. Clean structure means relevant ads, higher Quality Scores, and more budget going where it matters.
6. You're using the wrong bidding strategy
Google offers several automated bidding strategies, and choosing the wrong one is a common cause of poor performance. Maximise Clicks gets traffic but won't optimise for conversions. Maximise Conversions without a target CPA can spend your entire budget chasing low-quality leads. Target ROAS requires enough historical data to work, and without it the algorithm flounders.
The fix: match your bidding strategy to your account's maturity. If you have fewer than 30 conversions per month, manual CPC or Maximise Clicks with a bid cap gives you control while you accumulate data. Once you have 30-50 conversions per month, switch to Maximise Conversions with a target CPA. For e-commerce with solid revenue tracking, Target ROAS works well once you have at least 50 conversions in 30 days. Don't let Google auto-apply a bidding strategy recommendation without understanding what it does.
7. You don't have enough data or budget
This is the one nobody wants to hear. Google Ads needs data to perform, and data costs money. If your daily budget is £10 and your average CPC is £3, you're getting three clicks per day. At a 5% conversion rate, that's one conversion every seven days. Smart Bidding can't optimise effectively on that volume. The algorithm needs patterns, and patterns need volume.
The fix: before increasing budget, make sure the six issues above are sorted first. There's no point feeding more money into a broken account. Once the fundamentals are solid, run the maths: at your CPC and conversion rate, how many conversions can your budget produce per month? If the answer is fewer than 15-20, the algorithm will struggle. You either need more budget, cheaper keywords, or a different channel.
The one situation where none of these fixes matter
There's an eighth reason Google Ads don't work that's rarely mentioned: the product or service isn't something people actively search for. If demand doesn't exist at the search level, search advertising can't manufacture it. A business selling something genuinely novel, where buyers don't yet know to search for it by name or category, will find Google Ads frustrating regardless of how well the account is managed. In those cases, Display or YouTube advertising that generates awareness tends to be a better starting point than search. Most small businesses don't have this problem, but it's worth ruling out before concluding the account is at fault.
What to do next
Work through this list from top to bottom. That order isn't random. Each fix builds on the one before it. There's no point optimising bids if your conversion tracking is broken, and there's no point increasing budget if your landing pages don't convert.
If you've gone through all seven and you're still not sure what's wrong, I offer a free Google Ads audit. I'll look at your account, identify the specific issues, and tell you exactly what needs fixing. No sales pitch, just a clear report.
Google Ads management in North Wales: book a free audit and I'll tell you exactly what's causing the problem.
