Why your Google Ads budget disappears

Businesses that try Google Ads and stop usually describe the same experience: the money went, the clicks came, the enquiries did not. Almost always the cause is not the platform or the market. It is a handful of settings that are on by default and quietly widen your targeting far beyond what you intended.

1. The Display Network is switched on

When you create a Search campaign, Google will happily also show your ads across millions of other websites and apps. The clicks are cheaper, which looks good in a report, and the intent is dramatically lower — including accidental taps inside mobile games.

Check: your Search campaign settings, and turn off both the Display Network and Search Partners while you learn what works. You can reintroduce them deliberately later.

2. Broad match without negatives

Broad match lets Google decide what is “related” to your keyword, and its definition is generous. A plumber bidding broadly on “boiler repair” can end up paying for “boiler repair jobs”, “boiler repair course” and “how to repair a boiler yourself”.

Check: the search terms report — the actual queries people typed, not the keywords you chose. Add anything irrelevant as a negative keyword. Do this weekly at first. A good negative list is usually worth more than a good keyword list.

Standing negatives worth adding on day one: free, jobs, salary, course, training, DIY, how to, and the names of any competitor you do not want to bid against.

3. Location targeting includes people merely “interested in” you

The default location option targets people in your area or showing interest in it. For a local service business that means paying for clicks from other countries.

Check: set location options to “presence” — people actually in the locations you serve.

4. The ad goes to the homepage

Someone searching for a specific service lands on a general homepage and has to find their way. Many do not. Every ad group should point at a page about the thing the ad promised.

This is usually the single biggest improvement available, and it is not an advertising change — it is a website change. Our piece on what a converting landing page contains covers the structure.

5. Nothing is being counted

Without conversion tracking you are optimising for clicks, and so is Google's automated bidding. Track the things that are actually worth money: form submissions, calls, quote requests. Not page views.

6. Automated bidding with no data

Smart bidding needs conversions to learn from. Switching it on for a brand-new account with no tracked conversions tells the system to optimise for nothing in particular, using your money to find out.

Check: start with manual or maximise-clicks while tracking beds in, then move to a conversion-based strategy once there is history.

A sane first month

1. Search only. No Display, no Partners.
2. A small number of tightly grouped keywords, phrase or exact match.
3. Presence-only location targeting.
4. Conversion tracking live before the first pound is spent.
5. Search terms reviewed weekly, negatives added every time.
6. One landing page per ad group.

We run this properly for clients rather than setting it and hoping — see our Google Ads service, or how it fits with the rest under digital marketing. If you would rather have someone look at an existing account first, book a call.