What are common Google Ads mistakes, and how do I find them?

Bidding uses your primary conversion actions, the ones reported in the Conversions column, so a mistake there reaches every bid. Two actions counting one sale make each sale look half its cost; an action that stopped recording tells bidding the campaigns stopped converting. Check this first, because every other line reads it.

Where to look: the Status column on Goals › Conversions › Summary, then your campaigns segmented by conversion action over the last 30 days. The conversion tracking guide has each step and the test.

Your keywords match searches you didn’t write. The search terms report shows the actual searches that triggered your ads, with what each cost and whether it converted, and the ones that don’t fit what you sell are money spent on nothing.

Where to look: Campaigns › Insights and reports › Search terms, filtered to terms with cost and no conversions over the last 30 days. The wasted search terms guide shows how to add them as negative keywords without blocking your own.

When you create a Search campaign, Google includes its search partners by default, and its own page says their clicks may not always reflect highly targeted traffic. In some campaigns they pay; in others they convert far below Google Search.

Where to look: your campaigns segmented by Network (with search partners), comparing cost per conversion on each. The search partners guide says when to turn them off.

A campaign’s location option starts as people in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your locations, and Google marks it recommended. It suits a hotel, whose customers search from somewhere else. For a business that serves the people nearby, it pays for clicks from people elsewhere who searched about the area.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Campaigns and open the campaign.
2. 02Select the Settings tab, expand Locations and select Location options.
3. 03Select Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations, then Save.

To see where the clicks came from first, go to Campaigns › Insights and reports › When and where your ads showed and open the Matched locations tab.

With auto-apply on, Google applies the recommendations you opted into, regularly and without asking again. The list includes adding keywords and broad match keywords, adjusting target CPA and ROAS, and including search partners and Display expansion. Each is made on Google’s schedule, unless someone reads the queue on the Recommendations page and dismisses it first.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Recommendations and select Auto-apply settings.
2. 02Read what’s ticked. The History tab says what was applied and when.
3. 03Untick the ones you’d rather decide yourself, and select Save.

After a change to an automated bid strategy, its status reads Learning while it calibrates, and Google says that can take a few conversion cycles, typically one or two. A target changed every few days starts over each time and never settles.

Where to look: the bid strategy’s status, where hovering over Learning says what reset it, and Campaigns › Change history. The learning phase guide has the rest.

Google disapproves an ad whose destination doesn’t function, under its Destination not working policy, and a page that loads in your browser can still fail for Google’s crawler. Until it’s fixed, the ad doesn’t run. A page that redirects is worth finding too: to another site, Google’s destination requirements disapprove it, and within yours every click makes a round trip to the old address first.

Where to look: the Status and policy details of your ads and assets, and the landing pages they send clicks to. The destination guide shows how to open each as Google does.

Sitelinks and callouts cost nothing to add and make the ad bigger on the page. Google recommends at least 4 sitelinks at the account level, and needs 2 before any show.

Where to look: the Associations view under Campaigns › Assets, filtered by asset type. The sitelinks and callouts guide has examples that work.

Your own keywords don’t bid against each other. When two campaigns can match one search, Google picks which serves it, preferring an exact-match keyword identical to the search, so a search can land in a campaign you didn’t mean for it, and Performance Max can take brand searches no exact keyword covers.

Where to look: the search terms report across campaigns, sorted by search term, for a search two campaigns both paid for. The brand exclusions guide covers Performance Max.

A campaign converting at or better than its target, and missing searches for want of budget, is turning away sales that would pay. Its Search lost IS (budget) column is the share of the time its ads didn’t show because of its budget.

Where to look: your campaigns with Search lost IS (budget) added to the columns, beside their cost per conversion or return. The impression share guide says which missed searches are worth winning back.

Goldbeater looks for all ten every day, and whenever you ask, among the rest of the problems on its list. Where one costs money it estimates how much a month, and where a setting fixes it, it drafts the change. Nothing reaches your account until a person approves it and presses Apply, and an applied change can be undone.

For the whole account, line by line, the audit checklist has every check Goldbeater runs and where to find each in Google Ads.

Where should I start?

With conversions. Bidding reads them, and so does every judgment of what’s working, so a conversion counted twice or not at all makes the rest of the list wrong.

Should I turn off auto-apply recommendations?

Read what it’s set to apply first. Google applies the recommendations you opted into regularly, and lists them under Auto-apply settings; untick any you’d rather decide yourself.

Is Presence or interest ever the right location option?

Yes, where your customers search from somewhere else: a hotel, a venue, a destination. Google recommends it; for a business that serves the people nearby, Presence keeps the clicks local.