Why your Google Ads campaigns aren’t working.

1. Your ads lead to the wrong page

This is the mistake we see most. The ad promises a roofing quote, and the click leads to the homepage, where the visitor has to hunt for the right service and the right form. Sometimes the page doesn’t even exist anymore. Every click is paid for, and most visitors leave.

Google actually measures landing page experience, meaning how relevant and useful the page is to the person who clicked. It is one of the three components of Quality Score, along with ad relevance and expected click-through rate. A page that doesn’t work gets the ad disapproved: a 404 error is one of the cases of “destination not working”.

2. Your budget goes to sites you didn’t choose

When you create a Search Network campaign, Google’s partner sites are included by default. These partners extend your reach to hundreds of sites that don’t belong to Google. Google itself warns that clicks from these sites may not always reflect highly targeted traffic, and it doesn’t tell you which sites your ads appeared on, except for Performance Max campaigns.

The same goes for Display Network expansion: when it is checked in a search campaign, it automatically creates image ads on websites and apps. For a small business that wants leads from people searching for its service, these are rarely the most useful clicks.

3. Google optimizes toward the wrong conversion

Google lets you choose what you consider a conversion: a purchase, a sign-up, a call. The problem starts when you count something with no value, like a button click or a page visit. The account then shows plenty of “conversions” that aren’t leads, and automated bidding goes looking for even more of those useless clicks.

Two settings matter. Primary conversions are used for bidding; secondary ones are there for observation only. And for quote requests, counting “One” conversion per click is the right choice: Google recommends it when what matters is getting a lead, not how many.

4. Keywords that spend without ever converting

Broad match is the match type assigned to your keywords by default. It can show your ad for searches that don’t contain the direct meaning of your keywords. Without negative keywords, a roofer pays for “roofer jobs” and a clinic for “dental hygiene course”. Google itself specifies that broad match should be used with Smart Bidding.

The fix lies in one report: search terms. It shows the actual searches that triggered your ads. Google advises adding as a negative keyword any term that isn’t relevant enough to your products or services. Done every week, this work cuts a good share of the waste. A clear structure helps too: one ad group per service, with its own keywords and its own page.

5. Calls aren’t counted

In many trades, customers call rather than fill in a form. If those calls aren’t tracked, the account seems to produce nothing even though it works, and sometimes the best campaign gets cut.

Google offers dynamically generated forwarding numbers, which replace your number on your website at no charge. They are available in Canada. A call counts as a conversion only if it lasts longer than a minimum length you set, which filters out calls too short to lead to a sale.

The technique we use most often: a trackable number, provided by a call tracking service and forwarded to your usual line. Your customer dials this number without noticing any difference, the call rings at your business, and each call is tied to the campaign that generated it before being sent to Google Ads as a conversion.

6. Your ads show outside your service area

By default, location targeting includes both people located in your area and people who have shown interest in it. Google presents this option, Presence or interest, as the recommended choice. For a service that travels to customers within a set radius, we prefer Presence: reaching people located in the targeted area or who regularly go there. Google itself offers this choice when you want to target only the people who are there.

7. Automatic settings nobody is watching

Google can apply some recommendations automatically. Among those it can apply: adding broad match keywords, expanding reach to Search Partners, using Display Network expansion. In other words, settings that affect causes 2 and 4 can come back without anyone deciding it.

The opposite excess is just as costly. Smart Bidding strategies need a learning period, 7 to 14 days according to Google, during which you should avoid frequent changes to the budget, the goals or the conversions. An account that gets changed every two days never learns.

Before giving up on Google Ads

Once these points are fixed, give the account a few weeks of clean data before drawing conclusions. The first leads often come in quickly; real profitability is better judged over three to six months. To know what budget to plan for in the meantime, see our guide on what Google Ads costs; to review the basics, our Google Ads guide for small businesses.

If, after all that, the leads still don’t come, the question becomes broader: the offer, the price, the area or the channel. It is rare, but it happens, and a good diagnosis has to be able to say so. Our Google Ads team always starts with this review of the existing account.