Most common Google Ads mistakes (and how to fix them)

Why do some Google Ads campaigns skyrocket with success while others stumble and crumble despite similar investments? Is there a secret that only a few people know?

Nope. Just the same old mistakes year after year.

Today, I’ll disclose some of the most common – yet often overlooked – Google Ads mistakes that advertisers, both novice and experienced, frequently find themselves making. These aren’t just theoretical fluffs – they’re drawn from real-world campaigns. And all of them are (easily) fixable.

 

Budget

 

Overspending

The budget for Google Ads is based on daily spending and is set up at the campaign level. Each campaign has its own budget. So, if you have 5 campaigns with a daily budget of $50, you might spend $250 per day. Or about $7500 per month.

It is very easy to overspend if your campaign structure is poor. And if you’re not limiting your daily spending.

 

How to fix it:

• Always specify how much per month you want to spend. Then, divide by day and campaign.
• Don’t leave your campaigns unattended. Check if they are reaching their limit or overspending. Adjust daily budget.
• Don’t have too many campaigns if your budget is small.
• Set an account budget, but it is only available for accounts that use monthly invoicing as a payment method.
• Use shared budgets under Tools > Budgets and bidding. You can use one budget for several campaigns.

 

 

Underfunding

Mostly, these are issues with payment methods. It’s common to forget that you need to top up your credit card or maybe update one. Although it’s an easy one to fix, your campaign stopping is not a good thing. If they are not running for a longer period, you’re losing on performance metrics. For example, your CTR and quality score go down, and when you start running your campaigns, you might see increased CPC.

Not to mention, if you’re on CPA bidding. You might enter learning phase again, ruining your performance.

 

How to fix it:

• Always have a backup payment method. Billing >Payment methods.
• If you’re spending a lot ($5000+/month) you might think about setting up monthly invoicing.

 

Bidding Strategy Blunders

This is an important one. Choosing an incorrect bidding strategy can cost you a lot, and you might not get any conversions. I have a post explaining bidding strategies in detail. You might want to give that a read.

 

With all this automated bidding strategy hype, people are starting their campaigns and forgetting that automated bidding needs data, meaning conversions. If you don’t have at least 100-200 conversions per month, per campaign. You are risking overspending by a lot. And don’t listen to Google saying you only need 30. Not always.

 

How to fix it:

• Start with manual CPC, it allows for better spending control.
• Once your campaign has enough conversions, test the automated bidding strategy through built-in experiments. Let the data guide you.

 

 

 

Targeting Mistakes

 

Broad Targeting

This is valid for keywords in Search campaigns and Display campaigns. Starting too broad will cause your budget to be spent quickly without any impact.

With broad keywords and automated bidding strategies, it might work if you have a good product market fit and start getting conversions quickly. Then, the algorithm learns fast, and Google starts optimizing your campaigns. Otherwise, you might want to start with manual CPC.

 

With display campaigns, including YouTube, it is also recommended to start with specific targeting. You always have to think about what audience you want to reach. Since the display campaign and Google have a huge reach, you can spend your budget pretty quickly without achieving any results. Narrow down your audience to make sure you’re targeting the people who might be interested in your product or service.

Just remember one thing. The more targeting options you add, the higher the cost will be due to the fact that Google sees additional targeting as an extra cost for using their data. Don’t narrow your audience too much, meaning don’t add too many targeting options because it might just increase the cost. You want to aim for that middle ground. For example, don’t include demographic targeting, like age or gender, at the beginning; just stick with interest, topics, or custom audiences.

 

How to fix it:

• Focus on long-tail keywords. Those convert better.
• Don’t use gender, age, or income targeting in Display and Video campaigns.
• Stick to one or to interests, like bargain hunters or luxury shoppers. Get data and move on.

 

Ignoring Negative Keywords

If you’re starting out with a Search campaign, no matter which match type, you have to utilize negative keywords.

Ideally, you should think about negative keywords before setting up your campaign. This is done during the keyword research phase. Just list the keywords that you already know have nothing to do with your business, but your ad can still show up. For example, if you’re selling new iPhones and you don’t have any used iPhones you should add the word “used” as a negative keyword.

 

Once you start running your campaign, you will receive traffic from the keywords you added. Always make sure to check the search terms report and add any keywords as negatives that you don’t find useful for your business. Depending on your spending, you might check the search term reports daily, weekly, or monthly.

 

During the first days of your campaign, I would recommend visiting this report daily just to catch negative keywords at the start and save additional dollars.

 

How to fix it:

• Proper keyword research. Think about the negative keywords before launching your campaign.
• Check search term report daily
• Use Google Keyword Planner to find additional negative keywords.

 

Geo-targeting Oversights

Google allows you to target countries, cities, even zip codes and radius targeting. You have to use the geo-targeting options because you don’t want to target too broad.

 

How you target depends on your campaign goals and even your budget. For example, if you want to target the whole United States with a small budget, I would recommend targeting just one state or even one city because the results will probably be better.

 

If your business is local, then you need to target only the area you actually work in, maybe even narrowing it down to specific zip codes. This way, you will make the most out of your budget.

 

How to fix it:

• Think carefully if you need to target the whole country, especially if you have a limited budget.
• For a bigger impact, select a smaller area and expand from there.

 

 

 

Content-Related Mistakes

Poor Ad Copy

Another big mistake is made when writing ads. Search ads are the only part that the user sees, so you have to make sure that it matches the keywords that you have and your offer.

 

Not only that, you have to make sure that the ad users see actually answers their search query, and this is where people tend to get too creative. Meaning they write an ad that is not as relatable to what people want to see. And even though you don’t pay if the user doesn’t click the ad, but you get a lower CTR.

 

When the search ad gets displayed and people don’t click, this signals Google that your ads are not as relevant, which decreases your quality score and increases your cost, and you’re losing your money.

 

How to fix it:

• Look at your keywords when writing ads. Don’t stray too far from them. First, answer the query, then put on your creative hat
• Make sure your ads are simple to understand and easy to read. You have only a second to attract attention, don’t waste it.

 

 

Weak Call-to-Actions (CTAs)

Your ad’s main job is to get a click, and to make that happen, you need to include a call to action in your ads. Sometimes, the call to action has to be very clear and direct. For example, for keywords such as “buy a new iPhone” your CTA can be very direct, like “Get your new iPhone right here”. If the ad is broader, your call to action might be softer, like “Learn more” or “Find out more”. But ideally, your ad has to contain some sort of call to action to nudge the user to click it.

 

How to fix it:

• Always invite a user to take any action in the ad. “Download”, “Learn more”, “Get it”, “Hire us”, “Get a quote”, “Call us Today”, etc.
• You can’t use the words “click here” in the ad. This is not allowed by Google.
• I use a simple formula for CTA: the phrase “I want to ….”; what comes next is your CTA.

 

Lack of Relevance

I always say that getting a click on the ad is just the beginning. Once the ad is clicked, the user lands on your page, and ideally, it should be a landing page dedicated to a specific campaign or at least dedicated to Google ads in general.

 

In any case the landing page has to relate to the keywords and to the ads as well. You have to meet the users’ expectations after they click on your ad and land on your page.

If  they don’t see what they were looking for, they will just leave, and you just wasted another click.

 

How to fix it:

• Don’t use the home page as your landing page. In some cases it’s OK, but usually it has to be a dedicated landing page.
• Use specific category or product pages to make users’ life easier. Don’t make the work on your website.
• Ideally, create a dedicated landing page for your Google Ads campaigns.

 

 

Technical and Design Flaws

 

Landing Page Errors

When you have one landing page that you advertise on Google ads, this might not be an issue for you. But when you have a lot of pages in different campaigns, different ad groups, and different ads, it’s easy to overlook pages that don’t work.

 

Always make sure that any page that you advertise within the account is actually working. There are no errors on the page, it loads perfectly, and there are no notifications or anything else that might scare the user away.

Because again, if someone comes to your landing page with an ad and the landing page is not working, you just wasted a dollar.

 

How to fix it:

• Visit the page that you advertise yourself, ideally on different browsers and devices.

 

Mobile Unfriendliness

It’s no surprise that a lot of traffic is coming from mobile devices. Most websites see 60%, 70%, or 80% of traffic coming from mobile devices. Obviously, you have to make sure that your website is mobile friendly, which you should have done four or five years ago.

 

But I still see a lot of landing pages or pages that are used to direct people from campaigns are not as mobile friendly as they should be. The images are too big, the text is too small, and the CTA is somewhere at the bottom of the page. Don’t forget there’s a lot more scrolling on the mobile page than on a desktop. Make sure your call to action is somewhere above so the user doesn’t have to scroll to the bottom to find it.

 

How to fix it:

• I shouldn’t even put this here – make sure your page looks great on a mobile device.
• Check with several devices. Ask colleagues or friends to take a look at your pages.
• Check the funnel yourself. Order the product or service on your mobile device to make sure that everything works and is easily visible.

 

 

Slow Page Load Times

Page speed not only affects user experience, but Google also punishes you for having the same page. No one wants to wait for the page to load forever, so people will click away if your pages are slow.

 

Google also monitors the page speed, and if the page is very slow, your page experience or landing page experience will be lower which will impact the Quality Score, and will increase the cost.

 

You can use this Google tool to measure your page speeds, and it even gives you recommendations on what to fix. If you have a developer, just send them this and ask if they can optimize it.

If not, check what you can do. Usually, the page is slower due to big images uploaded to a page, so maybe you can optimize the images, and remove some if they’re not necessary.

 

How to fix it:

• Check the page speed tool above. Make sure you’re in the green zone
• Fix issues that are recommended by the tool.
• Reduce unnecessary images or videos on the page to make it load faster.

 

 

 

 

Tracking and Analytical Mistakes

 

Ignoring Conversion Tracking

I assume one of the main reasons you advertise is to get conversions. This could be sales, leads, registrations, or whatever. You’re not here to get just clicks, you want people to take a specific action on your website which is known as a conversion.

 

But most people skip this. Google doesn’t know what actions are important; thus, it cannot optimize campaigns.

 

If you have a product or service that can be purchased online, then setting up a conversion is not that hard. You can either import one from Google Analytics or just use conversions within your Google ads account. Once created, use Google tag manager to place it on your website.

 

There are websites that don’t sell anything online. But even then, I would advise creating some kind of conversion. You can create conversion on phone clicks or conversion as page visits. Although it’s not that optimal it’s still an indication of an action that is somewhat important for your business, and nowthe  algorithm also knows that.

 

How to fix it:

• Create a conversion in the account for the action you find the most important.
• If you have phone number on your website, make it clickable and use it as a conversion.
• If you have email on your website, do the same.
• Don’t have either: find an action on your site that would indicate that a person is interested doing a business with you.

 

 

Misinterpreting Data

Google ads track conversions differently from any other platform, and this is actually true for any platform out there. To put it simply, each platform tries to credit its own effort.

 

Google Ads will be biased towards Google ads clicks. In Google Ads a conversion is attributed to Google ads click within a default window of 30 days unless you changed it. This means that if the user clicks your ad on Monday and then comes after two weeks through a different channel (email), that conversion will be attributed to Google Ads. If you look at your Google Analytics account, you will see a different attribution. Email would get the credit.

 

This means you can’t compare the two platforms and try to make the numbers look the same. They will always differ. My advice is just to pick one and use that.

 

Also, quite a common mistake is to compare statistics from Google Analytics report and Google Ads. What people forget is that Google ads report clicks, and most reports in Google Analytics are based on sessions or users. These are two different metrics, and rarely match.

 

How to fix it:

• Don’t try to compare reports. Different platforms measure things differently.
• Pick one, and stick to it. Optimise, then check your bottom line. Usually, you creative a native Google Ads conversions and use that as your main one.

 

Neglecting Google Analytics

I’ve mentioned Google Analytics before, and it’s a great tool for analysing data. You can do some analysis in the Google Ads, but it’s limited, so my advice is to connect the two accounts so that the data from Google ads can flow into Google Analytics.

 

You can spot a lot of insights while looking at combined data from both accounts. This can be used to optimize campaigns. Just remember that data in both accounts are not 100% accurate, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

How to fix it:

• Connect accounts, either through Google Ads account or through Google Analytics. Both ways are super easy.
• Create reports in Google Analytics and try to slice the data in different ways. See if you spot any patterns or insights.

 

 

Campaign Management Mistakes

 

Infrequent Monitoring

One of the most common mistakes people make, especially at the beginning, is thinking that once you set up a campaign, you can leave it for a while. This is not true. You have to revisit your campaign a lot more often.

 

Especially at the beginning, when you are just starting out, I would advise you to visit daily. Log into your account, check the performance, check the statistics, and understand what is happening. If your budget is small, you don’t have to come in daily because, most likely, you will not see a big difference. But with bigger budgets, you have to know what’s going on, so leaving the campaign untouched for a long period of time might bring you suboptimal results.

 

This is especially true for Display campaigns for YouTube campaigns where you have to monitor the placements and remove the ones that are not performing but draining your budget.

 

How to fix it:

• With new accounts, visit daily.
• Even if you’re not the one managing, you need to understand what’s happening.
• If an agency is managing your account, ask for performance updates. And not just clicks and impressions, ask for conversions, revenue, etc. The stuff that matters.

 

Failing to Adjust

And, of course, just visiting an account is not enough. You have to make adjustments. Not too often if you’re using an automated bidding strategy. But you have to understand that there’s no way that campaign can be set and performing amazing without making any changes to it.

 

You might have to change the ads, add additional ads, increase/decrease the bids for the keywords, increase/decrease the budget, check device performance, check auction insights, check search term reports etc. There are a lot of things going on, and you need to be on top of them.

 

How to fix it:

• Don’t have time, hire someone. But don’t leave them, make sure they report back to you with changes they make.
• Want to learn? Set aside some time to go through your keywords, bids, budgets, ads, search terms, devices, locations, and so on.

 

Ignoring Ad Assets

Even though Google promotes assets quite heavily, there are still people who miss them. The ad assets or ad assets can be found under the ads. You have your site links, promo extensions, phone numbers, structured snippets, price extensions and so on and so forth. These assets can appear with your ad and make it more clickable which can help you get additional conversions.

 

How to fix it:

• Go to Campaign > Ads & assets > Assets. Add as many as apply to your business
• Not all assets are available in all countries. Not all assets are shown each time. And you can’t control which ones are.
• Campaign level assets is enough. With a more robust structure, some assets can be applied on an ad group level.

 

 

 

 

Compliance and Legal Missteps

 

Violating Google’s Ad Policies

You can’t promote everything on Google ads. Like any other platform, it has its own rules, so my recommendation is always to check them before you start advertising, especially for sensitive subjects like politics and finance services, medicine, and similar. Some things are not allowed, but there are products or services that can be advertised with some exceptions or with additional documents provided to Google (certificates and whatnot).

 

You can get banned for violating some of the policies. Thread carefully. But usually, Google will just not approve your ads, stating that it violates one of its policies.

 

If the ads are just not approved, it’s fine, but if your account gets banned, the ban itself is on your domain name, not on your account. So creating a new account will not help and this is very bad because you will not be able to advertise your website on Google ads anymore.

 

How to fix it:

• Read the policy
• if not approved don’t blindly submit again. This can get you banned. Read the policy, make changes.
• Go to reddit, or other places to find answers, if unsure what to fix.
• Last resort, contact support, they will help you out. It might take a while, though.

 

 

Ignoring Local Laws

 

If you’re advertising in one country, this might not be an issue for you. However, international advertisers should always check local laws. Google will allow some of the services to be advertised in one country but not in others. Gambling or adult content might be allowed in some countries but be banned in others. Always double-check if the product or service you advertise is allowed in a specific country because, again, your ads might not be approved, and your account might be banned.

 

How to fix it:

• Google looks at local laws as well. Make sure you know them
• Google about particular services in that country. Or hire legal help.

Copyright Issues

This should be a no-brainer; copyrighted material is not allowed to be used in any platform. Google Ads included. Double-check if whatever you advertise has copyrighted material.

 

You should be fine, as there are a lot of e-commerce sites and product resellers that advertise products that are obviously copyrighted. Google still allows them to be advertised. Sometimes, you will find that some text in the ads will not be allowed as it is copyrighted. They have to be replaced. However, you can use a lot of copyrighted words or phrases as keywords, and it should be fine.

 

How to fix it:

• If something is copyrighted in the ad, Google will let you know. So, change it and don’t try any tricks.
• You can bid on any keywords you like. No restrictions.

 

 

 

Mistakes in Ad Testing and Optimization

 

Lack of A/B Testing: Importance and execution.

Google has a built-in testing tool called Experiments. It’s pretty simple, but it gets the job done. You can test different ads, bidding strategies, and even different landing pages. If you have a lot of traffic, I encourage you to use that and test everything that you can to find out what works best for your audience.

 

How to fix it:

• Just try the tool under All campaigns > Experiments
• Use the conversion calculator to check if the results are significant enough. I like this one.

 

 

Ignoring Performance Metrics

Each business has its own goal, so only you know why you chose to advertise on Google ads, and what you want from it. But for the most part, people are on Google ads because they want to increase sales or, to put it simply, get conversions. Conversions can be anything that you deem important for your business, but you have to focus only on conversions (revenue, sales, profit).

 

Don’t focus on metrics like clicks, click-through rate, impression share, or whatever, because these are only additional metrics. For example, you can use CTR to improve your ads because it shows how many people click on your ad, and that is fine. But at the end of the day, if more people click on the ads, you should get more value, more conversions, more revenue, and more sales. Always have your main metric, your KPI, at the back of your head.

 

How to fix it:

• Each dollar you spend should at least get that dollar back. Ideally more. You’re doing a business, not a charity.
• Don’t focus on metrics like clicks, CTR, etc. Conversions, revenue, sales > value for your business.

 

 

Ignoring Advanced Features

Google Ads evolves quite quickly, adding new features and tools. My recommendation is to try to keep up. If your budget is small, most likely it will not have a significant impact. Usually, those tools (various betas) are developed for big businesses. But some actually help you get a lot more from Google ads. Make sure you understand and use the tools that Google provides you.

 

How to fix it:

• Read a good blog. Lots of them online
• Join a Facebook group (hint: mine). There are plenty of people who can help you.
• Read Google Ads blog.

 

Neglecting Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is something you do before launching a campaign. Usually, you do know who your competitors are and what are their strengths and weaknesses. When you launch a campaign, you’ll get additional insights on who’s bidding on your keywords as well as how they are doing against you, what ads they have, etc. Looking at your competitors is always good because it keeps you on your toes as well, and it also might help you understand what is working and what is not.

 

How to fix it:

• Use Auction insights in the account to see who is bidding on your keywords as well
• Google those keywords to see what ads are used by your competitors
• Spot the difference, copy it to your ads, and test using a testing tool

 

 

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