Google Ads will happily spend your entire budget. Whether that spend turns into customers is a different matter — and the gap between the two is usually a handful of settings that Google leaves switched on by default because they’re good for Google, not necessarily for you.
When we audit an underperforming account, we tend to find the same leaks over and over. None of them are obscure. All of them are quietly costing money right now. Here’s what to check.
1. Conversion tracking that isn’t set up (or is set up wrong)
This is the big one. If your account isn’t accurately tracking conversions — calls, form submissions, purchases — then every optimisation decision after that is a guess. Google’s automated bidding is flying blind, you can’t tell which campaigns produce customers, and you’re reporting on clicks instead of results.
We regularly inherit accounts where tracking is missing, double-counting, or counting the wrong things (like every button click as a “conversion”). Fixing the tracking is almost always the single highest-impact change, because it makes everything else possible.
2. The “Search Partners” and Display network, left on for a Search campaign
When you create a Search campaign, Google quietly opts you into showing ads across its Search Partners and sometimes the Display Network too. For many businesses this traffic converts far worse than Google search itself — you’re paying search-level prices for much lower-intent placements. Worth reviewing, and often worth turning off so your budget concentrates where intent is highest.
3. Broad match with no negative keywords
Broad match lets Google show your ad for searches loosely related to your keywords. Without a disciplined list of negative keywords, that means paying for clicks on searches that will never convert — people looking for free options, jobs, DIY guides, or a completely different product. We’ve seen accounts spending a meaningful share of budget on searches the owner would be horrified by. Negative keywords are how you stop paying for junk.
4. Location settings set to “presence or interest”
Google’s default location targeting is “presence OR interest” — meaning your ad can show to people merely interested in your area, not just those in it. For a local business, that can mean paying to advertise to people on the other side of the country who once searched your city. Switching to “presence” (people actually in your target area) often tightens spend dramatically.
5. Auto-applied recommendations
Google can automatically apply its own “recommendations” to your account — adding keywords, changing bidding, expanding targeting — unless you turn that off. Some recommendations are fine; many quietly broaden your targeting and increase spend in ways that suit Google’s revenue more than your results. We generally turn auto-apply off and review recommendations manually.
6. Sending every click to the homepage
This one isn’t a setting in the account — it’s a setting in your head. If your ad promises “emergency plumber, 24/7” and the click lands on a generic homepage, you’ve paid for a visit and then lost it. The landing page has to match the ad’s promise and make it easy to take the next step. The best-run campaign in the world can’t fix a page that doesn’t convert.
The pattern behind all of these
Notice the theme: Google’s defaults are tuned to spend more and reach wider. That’s not a conspiracy — it’s just that broader targeting and more automation generally increase spend, and Google’s a business. Your job (or your agency’s) is to pull the account back toward intent and accountability: track what’s real, show to the right people, and stop paying for everything else.
A quick self-audit
You can sanity-check your own account in ten minutes:
- Are conversions tracked accurately, and do the numbers look believable?
- Are Search Partners / Display switched on for your Search campaigns — and should they be?
- Is there a real negative-keyword list?
- Is location targeting set to “presence” or the looser “presence or interest”?
- Are auto-applied recommendations turned off?
If a few of those make you wince, your budget is probably working harder for Google than for you. Send us your account for a free look — we’ll tell you honestly where it’s leaking and what we’d change first.
About the author
Andrew Roper
Founder and technical director of Advantage Digital Marketing, an Adelaide-based technical studio. 22+ years of practice building production software for institutional, premium, and growth-stage businesses across Australia, the UK, Europe and South Africa. Writes from the studio’s direct integration, custom application, and AI automation work.
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