Part of our guide: Paid media revenue leaks →
Most Google Ads accounts waste part of their budget. Not because anyone is careless, but because the defaults Google sets, the reports it shows first, and the way accounts grow over time all push spend toward clicks that never become customers.
The good news: you can spot most of it yourself in under an hour, with nothing more than access to your own account. Here are the eight checks we run first on every account we review, and what each one tells you.
1. Read your search terms, not your keywords
Your keyword list says what you bid on. The search terms report says what people actually typed before they clicked. With broad match and close variants, those two lists can look very different.
How to check: open Insights and reports, then Search terms, set the date range to the last 90 days and sort by cost. Read the top 50 lines. Every term that a buyer would never type (jobs, free, template, course, a competitor's login page) is money you can stop spending today by adding it as a negative keyword.
2. Count your Primary conversions
Smart Bidding learns from whatever you mark as a Primary conversion. If a page view, a scroll, or a click on your phone number counts the same as a sale or a booked call, the algorithm will chase the cheap actions.
How to check: go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary. Look at the Primary column. You want one or two actions that match real business value. Anything else should be Secondary, so it is still reported but no longer steers your bids.
3. Look for leads counted twice
A thank you page tag and a form submit event that both fire on the same lead will double your conversions. Your cost per lead looks great, bidding gets more aggressive, and real results don't follow.
How to check: compare last month's conversions in Google Ads with the number of leads your CRM or inbox actually received. If Google Ads reports clearly more, something is counting twice.
4. Check where Performance Max and Display spend goes
Performance Max and Display campaigns can spend heavily on placements you would never choose: mobile apps, games, and low quality sites.
How to check: in Performance Max, open the Insights and placement reports. For Display, open Where ads showed. Sort by cost and exclude anything that has spent money without a single conversion.
5. Compare spend by device, day and hour
Many B2B accounts get most of their real leads on desktop during working hours, while a large share of the budget goes to mobile traffic at night and on weekends.
How to check: open the Devices report and the When ads showed report. Compare cost per conversion across segments. Where one segment converts at three times the cost of the others, lower its bid adjustment or limit its hours.
6. Match every ad to its landing page
If your ad promises one thing and the page talks about something else, people leave. You still pay for the click, and your Quality Score drops, which raises what you pay for every future click.
How to check: click the final URL of your five most expensive ads. Does the headline on the page say the same thing as the ad? Is there one clear next step above the fold? Does the page load fast on a phone?
7. Check your location setting
By default, Google shows ads to people "in or interested in" your target locations. That means someone on the other side of the world who searched for your city can click your ad.
How to check: open Campaign settings, then Locations, then Location options. For most businesses, "Presence: people in or regularly in your included locations" is the right choice. Then open the Locations report and look for countries you never meant to target.
8. Find campaigns that spend but never convert
Accounts grow by adding campaigns. Few people go back to remove the ones that stopped working.
How to check: set the date range to the last 90 days and sort campaigns by cost. Any campaign with meaningful spend and zero or near zero conversions needs a decision: fix the targeting and the page, or pause it and move the budget to what works.
What to do with what you find
Write down each issue next to what it cost you in the last 90 days. That list, sorted by cost, is your fix plan. Start with tracking (checks 2 and 3), because every other fix depends on Google learning from the right signal. Then cut obvious waste (checks 1, 4, 7 and 8), and finish with the work that lifts conversion rate (checks 5 and 6).
Want us to run the checks for you?
If you'd rather have someone do this for you, we offer a free Google Ads check. You give us read only access, and within two business days of accepting our link you get a written report: what is wasting money, what is working and how to grow it, and every fix in order of value, with the cost shown campaign by campaign. We change nothing in your account, and there is no contract.
Get your free Google Ads check
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Start with the search terms report and your conversion settings. Irrelevant search terms with spend and conversions that don't match real leads are the two most common signs of waste.
-
Ours is. You give read only access, we send a written report within two business days, and there is no contract or obligation. We change nothing in your account.
-
No. Read only access lets someone view campaigns and reports. They cannot edit campaigns, change budgets or see your billing details, and you can remove the access at any time.
-
Review search terms every week while you're making changes, and do a full check like the one above every quarter. Accounts drift as Google updates its features and as you add campaigns.
-
Conversion tracking. If Google is learning from the wrong actions, every other optimization makes the problem bigger, not smaller.
Ready to put this into practice?
Book a free 30-minute Revenue Leak Audit. We'll review your campaigns and build you a plan.
Book a free audit →