Most Google Ads accounts we audit are not broken because of bad luck. They are broken because of the same handful of decisions, made early and never revisited. Here are the five we see most often.
1. Conversion tracking that measures the wrong thing
If your account counts a page view, a button click, or every form submission including spam as a conversion, then Google is optimising toward noise. Smart Bidding is only as good as the signal you feed it. Before touching bids or budgets, confirm that a conversion means a real enquiry from a real person.
2. No negative keyword discipline
Broad match without a maintained negative list is how budget disappears. We regularly find accounts paying for searches containing free, jobs, DIY and competitor brand names. Reviewing the search terms report every fortnight is unglamorous work, and it is usually the fastest way to lower cost per lead.
3. Sending every click to the homepage
Someone searching for a specific service does not want your homepage. They want the page about that service, with the proof and the enquiry form in view. Ad-to-page relevance affects your conversion rate and your Quality Score, which means it affects what you pay per click as well.
4. Running one campaign for everything
When high-margin and low-margin services share a campaign, you cannot control where the budget goes. Structure should follow intent and profitability, so you can spend more where the return justifies it and pull back where it does not.
5. Judging performance on clicks and impressions
Impressions are not customers. The numbers that matter are qualified enquiries, cost per qualified enquiry, and what those enquiries are worth once they close. If your monthly report leads with click-through rate, ask what it is not showing you.
If two or more of these sound familiar, an account audit will usually pay for itself quickly.
