The 30-50% waste problem
After auditing dozens of small business Google Ads accounts, I've found that most waste between 30% and 50% of their budget on searches that will never convert. Not because the business is bad — because the account setup is lazy.
Here are the five mistakes I see most often, and exactly what to do about each one.
1. Running broad match with no negative keywords
Broad match tells Google "show my ad for anything vaguely related to this keyword." Without a robust negative keyword list, you're paying for searches like "how to fix my own dishwasher" when you're a dishwasher repair company.
Fix: Build a negative keyword list of 200+ terms on day one. Pull search term reports weekly and add negatives within 24 hours of identifying waste.
2. Sending all traffic to your homepage
Your homepage talks about everything you do. But someone searching "emergency refrigerator repair Atlanta" doesn't care about your dryer services, your company history, or your blog. They need to see "Emergency Refrigerator Repair" above the fold with a phone number.
Fix: Build dedicated landing pages for every major service or product category. Match the headline to the search query. One page, one offer, one action.
3. No geographic targeting
If you're a local business and your ads are showing to people 100 miles away, you're burning money on leads you can't serve.
Fix: Set a geographic radius that matches your actual service area. For most local businesses, that's 15-35 miles. Check your search terms report for out-of-area modifier combinations and add them as negatives.
4. Ignoring call quality
Clicks and conversions on your dashboard don't mean anything if the calls are bad. I've audited accounts where 40% of tracked "conversions" were wrong numbers, sales calls, or people outside the service area.
Fix: Implement call tracking (CallRail or similar) and actually listen to recordings. Build a weekly review cadence where you listen to 10-15 calls, identify the bad ones, trace them back to the search terms that triggered them, and add those terms as negatives.
5. Even budget allocation across campaigns
Not all campaigns are equal. If you're spending the same amount on your highest-margin service as your lowest-margin one, you're leaving money on the table.
Fix: Weight your budget by margin and conversion rate. High-margin, high-converting campaigns get more budget. Commodity campaigns get floor spend.
What to do next
If you recognized your account in any of these five mistakes, you're probably wasting thousands per month. I offer a free 15-minute ad account review — I'll pull your search terms report and show you exactly where the waste is. Contact me here.