Why Your Google Ads Aren’t Working (And How to Fix Them)
Google Ads can be one of the most effective tools in a small business’s marketing arsenal — or it can quietly drain your bank account every month with nothing to show for it. In my experience working with UK SMEs, the same six mistakes come up time and again.
1. Broad Match Keywords Are Burning Your Budget
What it looks like: You set up a campaign targeting “plumber” or “solicitor” or “accountant” — no qualifiers, no specifics. Google’s broad match then shows your ad for anything it considers loosely related. A plumber targeting “emergency boiler repair” on broad match might end up showing ads for “boiler installation courses” or “plumbing apprenticeships.”
Why it costs money: You’re paying for clicks from people who have no intention of buying from you. Every irrelevant click is money out the door. Broad match gives Google maximum flexibility to spend your budget — which is great for Google, not always great for you.
The fix: Start with phrase match or exact match keywords. Phrase match (put keywords in “quotes”) triggers ads when someone searches something that includes your phrase. Exact match ([in square brackets]) triggers only for that specific query or very close variants. Yes, you’ll get fewer impressions — but the ones you get will actually be worth something. Revisit broad match only once you have conversion data and a solid negative keyword list in place.
2. You Have No Negative Keyword List
What it looks like: Your search terms report is full of irrelevant queries, but you’ve never added a single negative keyword. You’re a commercial solicitor showing ads for “solicitor jobs near me.” You’re a B2B accountant showing ads for “free accounting software.”
Why it costs money: Wasted clicks are the most visible symptom, but the damage runs deeper. Irrelevant traffic lowers your click-through rate, which harms your Quality Score (more on that shortly), which raises your cost-per-click across the board. A poor negative keyword list is a compound problem.
The fix: Before you launch any campaign, build a negative keyword list. Start with the obvious ones: “free,” “jobs,” “course,” “training,” “DIY,” “template,” “salary” — whatever doesn’t apply to your business. Then check your search terms report weekly for the first month and add negatives as you find them. This is not a one-time task. It’s ongoing hygiene.
3. You’re Sending Traffic to Your Homepage
What it looks like: Someone searches “emergency electrician Manchester,” clicks your ad, and lands on your homepage. Your homepage talks about your company, your values, your full range of services, and has a generic “contact us” link somewhere in the navigation.
Why it costs money: People searching with intent want a direct answer. If they land on a page that doesn’t immediately confirm you solve their specific problem, they leave. Your bounce rate climbs, your conversion rate tanks, and you’ve paid for a click that did nothing.
The fix: Every ad group should send traffic to a dedicated landing page that matches the search intent. Someone clicking an ad for “emergency electrician Manchester” should land on a page that says exactly that at the top, explains your response time, covers your service area, and has a prominent phone number and contact form. One message. One action. No distractions.
4. You’re Ignoring Quality Score
What it looks like: You haven’t looked at Quality Score since you set the campaigns up — or you didn’t know it existed. Your ads are running but costing more than competitors for the same positions.
Why it costs money: Quality Score is Google’s 1–10 rating of how relevant your keywords, ads, and landing pages are to the searcher. A high score means you pay less per click and rank higher. A low score means you pay more for worse positions. Two advertisers bidding the same amount will get very different results based on their Quality Score. Ignoring it is the equivalent of leaving money on the table.
The fix: Quality Score has three components — expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Improve all three. Write ads that directly address the keyword. Make sure your landing page content matches what the ad promises. Organise your campaigns into tight ad groups where all keywords share the same theme so your ad copy can be highly relevant. A Quality Score of 7 or above is a solid target.
5. You’re Not Tracking Conversions Properly
What it looks like: You’re running ads, getting clicks, spending money — but you have no idea which keywords, ads, or campaigns are actually generating enquiries or sales. You might have Google Analytics installed, but conversion tracking in Google Ads itself isn’t set up.
Why it costs money: Without conversion data, you’re flying blind. You can’t tell which £50 spend generated three leads and which generated none. You can’t make informed decisions about where to increase budget or what to pause. Smart Bidding strategies like Target CPA or Maximise Conversions are also useless without reliable conversion data — you’re essentially asking Google to optimise for nothing.
The fix: Set up Google Ads conversion tracking directly — not just through Analytics. Track what actually matters: phone calls from the website, form completions, purchases. If you use a call tracking tool, connect it. Once you have 30–50 conversions recorded in a campaign, you can start using automated bidding with confidence. Until then, use manual CPC and make decisions yourself based on the data you can see.
6. You’re Running One Ad With No Testing
What it looks like: One responsive search ad per ad group, set up when the campaign launched, never touched since. You have no idea if it’s the best possible version of your message.
Why it costs money: The first version of any ad is rarely the best. Different headlines, different calls to action, different value propositions will perform differently depending on your audience and market. Running a single ad means you’ve locked in whatever performance that one version delivers — good or bad — with no way to improve.
The fix: Run at least two responsive search ad variants per ad group with meaningfully different messaging. Not just tweaking one word — test a different headline approach, a different focus (price vs. speed vs. credentials), a different call to action. Let them run until you have statistically meaningful data, then pause the weaker one and test a new challenger. This process compounds over time. Campaigns that get incrementally better each month significantly outperform ones that are set and forgotten.
The Bottom Line
Google Ads rewards attention. The businesses that get strong returns from PPC aren’t necessarily spending more — they’re spending more carefully. Fix these six issues and you’ll get more from your existing budget before you even consider increasing it. If you’ve inherited a poorly set-up campaign, an audit is usually the right first step before throwing more money at it.
Need a Google Ads audit? If your campaigns aren’t delivering, get in touch at christaplinassociates.co.uk/#contact and I’ll take a proper look at what’s going wrong.
