We audit inherited Google Ads accounts every week. The same five mistakes show up in 9 out of 10 of them. If your account is more than six months old, there's a good chance at least three of these are silently costing you 20-40% of your spend.
The 5 mistakes
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No negative keyword discipline
The single biggest source of wasted spend. Without a robust, regularly-updated negative keyword list, your ads are matching dozens of queries that have nothing to do with what you sell. Fix: a weekly review of the search-term report, ruthlessly excluding anything that isn't a real prospect.
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Conversion tracking that lies
If you're optimising toward "form submission," you're optimising toward people who fill out forms — not people who buy. Set up proper offline conversion uploads or value-based bidding using your actual revenue data.
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Performance Max running unchecked
PMax cannibalises brand search by default. Without account-level negatives, signal-based audience controls, and asset-group strategy, you're paying Google to compete with your own SEO.
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One-size-fits-all landing pages
Sending every ad to the same homepage is the most common conversion-killer we see. Each campaign deserves a dedicated, intent-matched landing page. The conversion lift is typically 2-3×.
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Letting Google "auto-apply" recommendations
Auto-apply recommendations are designed to maximise Google's revenue, not yours. Turn them all off and review manually.
What a properly-run account looks like
The goal isn't more clicks. It's more profitable conversions. Everything else is vanity.
The difference between a leaking account and a profitable one usually isn't sophistication — it's discipline. Weekly negative keyword reviews. Monthly landing page tests. Quarterly account restructures. The accounts that print money are the ones where someone is paying attention to the same five levers, every week, forever.
Bleeding accounts
- No regular search-term reviews
- Form fills as the conversion goal
- PMax with default settings
- All ads point to the homepage
- Auto-apply turned on
Profitable accounts
- Weekly negative keyword discipline
- Revenue-based bidding
- PMax with proper signals + negatives
- Dedicated landing pages per campaign
- Recommendations reviewed manually
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account?
Book a free audit →The bottom line
You don't need a new agency. You don't need a bigger budget. You need someone reviewing the search-term report every Monday, ruthlessly cutting what doesn't work, and making sure every dollar lands on a page built to convert. Get those right and the rest takes care of itself.