How often have you logged into your Google Ads account and experienced both hope and worry in equal measure? There is huge potential for quick growth in your leads and sales, but the risks are also great. If you make unwise changes or rely on outdated strategies, it can cost you a fortune. One advertiser I worked with recently found this out the hard way, spending roughly 4,000 US dollars (about 3,200 pounds) in one week purely because he reacted too hastily to a short-term change in performance.
Google Ads, previously known as Google AdWords, has evolved significantly in the past decade. Once, it was relatively simple to craft campaigns centred on keywords and manual bidding. Nowadays, there are extensive automated bidding strategies, different match types, and an abundance of sophisticated signals that Google’s algorithm uses to decide which searchers to target. This expanded capability also brings expanded risk. It is easier than ever to waste money if you do not operate with a methodical, well-informed plan.
This post addresses some of the most common mistakes that stand between advertisers and truly efficient Google Ads campaigns. While every business and campaign is different, the core lessons tend to hold true. Avoiding these issues can drastically enhance your results, safeguard your budget, and support a more profitable approach to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Making Multiple Changes to a Stable Account
A surprisingly common mistake occurs when people see their campaigns performing well and decide to make several adjustments all at once. Perhaps you are generating a good number of conversions each week, but you suspect you could do better. You begin updating ad copy, shift from one bidding strategy to another, and add new keywords, all at the same time.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve a Google Ads account that is already doing moderately well. However, there is a notable difference between what you might call reactive changes and proactive changes.
Reactive changes are adjustments made to fix an evident drop in performance or to curb obviously poor traffic. This might involve adding negative keywords if you see repeated irrelevant queries, lowering your bids if click costs have unexpectedly surged, or pausing certain campaigns temporarily if budget constraints require it. In those instances, it can be reasonable to implement multiple fixes at once because you are addressing an urgent issue.
Proactive changes, on the other hand, are intended to see if you can push performance even higher. If your campaigns are already delivering a decent cost per conversion, you might want to experiment with new ad copy to improve click-through rate (CTR) or switch from manual bidding to a strategy like Target CPA or Target ROAS, hoping for more conversions at a sustainable cost. Each of these proactive adjustments is valuable. Yet if you introduce them simultaneously, you lose the ability to pinpoint which change is actually responsible for any improved (or worsened) results.
Imagine you refresh your ads, update your landing page, and shift from Maximise Conversions to Target CPA in the same week. Suppose your results then improve. Which element made the biggest difference? You could guess, but the data would not provide a clear answer. You might continue with all the changes, never realising that only one of them was truly effective while another was neutral, and the third actually hampered potential improvements.
A more systematic path is to plan your adjustments in a measured sequence. Start with your ad copy test, let it run for a couple of weeks or until you have sufficient data to draw a conclusion, and then move on to the next part of your plan. This method ensures you can directly attribute performance changes to the right factor and helps you avoid rolling out half a dozen changes that might conflict.
The Outdated Approach Called Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs)
Single Keyword Ad Groups, commonly referred to as SKAGs, once reigned supreme in certain corners of PPC. The logic was straightforward: put each individual keyword in its own ad group, match the ad copy to that specific keyword, and drive up Quality Score to lower your cost per click. Years ago, when Google Ads was more heavily reliant on exact keyword matching and simpler ranking factors, SKAGs could indeed be effective.
Today, Google’s algorithm is far more nuanced. It takes into account user intent, device, location, past search behaviour, demographic data, and more—much of which is invisible to advertisers. Splitting each keyword into its own silo can starve the system of data. Modern automated bidding strategies (like Target CPA or Target ROAS) learn optimally when they gather as much contextual and conversion data as possible, but SKAGs mean you spread that data thinly across dozens or hundreds of micro ad groups.
Another practical concern is the complexity SKAGs introduce. If you have a large account, keeping track of so many ad groups is cumbersome. You have to monitor each one for performance, pause or refine them individually, and update the ad copy whenever you want to test something new. If, for instance, you introduce Responsive Search Ads and want to see how they perform across your keywords, you would need to do this in a large number of ad groups.
By consolidating similar keywords into fewer ad groups, you let Google’s machine-learning process draw on a wider pool of clicks and conversions. You can also craft Responsive Search Ads that adapt dynamically to those keywords, meaning you can still maintain relevance without micromanaging every single variation. This not only makes day-to-day account management more efficient, it also tends to help Google’s algorithms deliver steadier and, in many cases, better results.
Why Broad Match Keywords Are Not Always the Enemy
Many advertisers avoid broad match keywords for fear of wasting precious budget on irrelevant clicks. It is understandable. When you run broad match, you give Google the freedom to show your ads for queries that might differ significantly from your core keywords, often under the assumption that they share a related context or user intent.
Broad match used poorly can be detrimental, particularly if you are using manual bidding or lacking a robust negative keyword list. Yet, if you harness the power of Google’s more advanced bidding strategies, broad match can be unexpectedly profitable. It allows Google’s system to match your ads to people whose search activity signals they might be prime candidates for your product or service—even if their immediate search term is not a carbon copy of your keyword.
Consider a business with a wide target audience or a broad product range. Relying solely on phrase or exact match might keep your cost per acquisition low, but it also restricts how many potential customers you can reach. There are countless different ways a user might search for something related to your offerings, and you can rarely think of all the variations yourself. Broad match can help you find new angles or user segments that you would never identify by manually brainstorming keywords.
The key is to pair broad match with a good bidding strategy like Target CPA or Target ROAS. These algorithms factor in numerous signals, including historical data about which types of users are most likely to convert. If the system sees a higher-likelihood user typing in a query that only partially resembles your keyword, broad match gives it permission to show your ad. Over time, you might discover that some of these queries convert at a decent cost. Without broad match, you would never appear in those auctions.
The same principle applies to negative keywords. If you are seeing truly irrelevant traffic—words that have no logical connection to your product or service—add them as negatives. Just be careful not to be overzealous. You do not want to block search terms prematurely, especially if they have not been given a chance to prove whether or not they can convert.
Overusing Negative Keywords and Choking Growth
On the topic of negative keywords, there is a fine line between pruning out traffic that is obviously useless and excessively restricting your campaigns so they cannot discover new opportunities. Negative keywords are critical if you keep seeing clicks from queries that are clearly off-target. For example, if you offer paid online courses, you would not want to show up for “free online courses” or “downloadable textbooks at no cost.” That is a good use of negatives.
Problems arise when you see a query that is marginally related yet not 100% aligned with your product, and decide to block it straightaway. This knee-jerk reaction might deny you a potentially profitable audience in the future. Some users might begin with a vague search because they are in the early stages of research. By the time they click your ad, explore your site, and realise you offer a relevant solution, they could become a paying customer.
If you always zero in on exactly the same handful of keywords without allowing Google to test slightly broader or tangential terms, you may keep your cost per conversion low but struggle to scale. You essentially put a cap on the new traffic Google can bring in. Growth often requires casting a wider net and letting the system pick up signals about user intent, even if the user’s search does not precisely match your known conversion drivers.
A practical solution is to let the data guide you. If a certain query pops up a few times and does not convert, that is still not conclusive evidence it is worthless. But if you have spent a reasonable sum (such as five or ten clicks, depending on your industry’s typical cost per click and conversion rate) without a single conversion, then you may well decide to exclude it. That way, you are not blocking terms prematurely nor are you tolerating them indefinitely. You are being guided by the numbers rather than personal assumptions.
Reacting Too Quickly to Performance Data
A sudden dip in your usual number of leads is disconcerting. For businesses relying on a steady flow of conversions, a downward shift can be a genuine threat. Perhaps you normally see fifty conversions a week and now you are only seeing thirty. It is perfectly natural to feel anxious. Yet, many advertisers turn that anxiety into drastic, ill-considered changes.
Picture someone who has been using Target CPA for months with consistent results. Then performance slips. Rather than waiting to see if it is a short-term dip, they massively increase their target CPA or swap to a new strategy like Maximise Conversions. The campaign then starts spending more per click, chasing conversions that may not even be there. If the dip was caused by external factors—maybe a holiday, a competitor’s short-term promotion, or anything else outside your direct control—it will not fix anything to bid higher. In some cases, you end up spending more money for the same number of conversions or even fewer.
It is important to observe performance over time. A single bad week could be a blip. Perhaps the next week your normal fifty leads return. This is exactly what happened to the advertiser I worked with, who lost thousands of dollars by rapidly changing his settings after just one bad week. When we reversed the changes, the campaign went back to its baseline of around fifty conversions, suggesting the dip was temporary rather than a genuine trend.
If you see a decline over multiple weeks or an entire month, then you have stronger evidence of a genuine downturn. At that point, look at external circumstances as well as your historical performance in that same period a year or two ago. Many industries have annual cycles or short bursts of lower demand. B2B markets might dip if business owners are focused on end-of-year accounting or tax deadlines. Retail clients might see lulls after holiday seasons when people are no longer in a spending mood.
When you do make changes, it still pays to be methodical. Perhaps start by slightly adjusting your target CPA or tightening up your negative keywords if you have identified traffic that is clearly irrelevant. Monitor your key metrics for at least a week or two. If you then see no improvement or further decline, you can choose another aspect to tweak, such as your ad creative or your budget.
Bringing It All Together
Managing Google Ads effectively can feel like walking a tightrope. You want to stay open-minded to new traffic sources while protecting your budget, and you want to test improvements without losing track of which strategies really work. The errors highlighted here can cause major difficulties, even in otherwise well-run campaigns. Fortunately, each one is avoidable with the right mindset and a willingness to trust data over panic.
There is no denying that issues will occasionally arise, especially in competitive markets. New competitors might come in with aggressive bids, a change in Google’s platform might affect how certain keywords behave, or external events could shift user intent almost overnight. However, a sense of perspective and a plan for incremental experimentation will keep you from burning through your marketing budget unnecessarily.
If you are currently struggling with your campaigns, take a step back and reflect on whether you have:
- Made too many big changes at once, muddying your understanding of what truly improves performance.
- Clung to outdated methods like Single Keyword Ad Groups, hindering machine-learning by fragmenting your data.
- Dismissed broad match outright and, in doing so, ignored a potentially powerful route for discovering additional customers.
- Used negative keywords too aggressively, closing off promising search terms that might convert with further testing.
- Panicked at temporary dips in performance and made sweeping alterations that ended up costing even more money.
When you step back and analyse your situation carefully, you can usually trace performance problems to one of these patterns. This is not to say you should ignore genuine red flags or ongoing declines over several weeks or months. Equally, if you see traffic that is obviously inappropriate for your product or region, you can (and should) exclude it. Just ensure that each decision is guided by adequate evidence rather than a single anecdotal case or a fleeting drop in conversions.
A good rule of thumb is to adopt a calm, scientific mindset. Document your account changes so you know exactly what happened and when. Use consistent time frames for evaluating results, avoiding the temptation to check data hourly and make snap judgements. By sticking to a disciplined process, you give Google’s systems enough time to adapt. You also cultivate reliable data sets from which you can learn.
Many people encounter these challenges but never step back to see the bigger picture. If you avoid or overcome these pitfalls, you will be ahead of a large proportion of advertisers who keep repeating the same mistakes. You will also be well-positioned to scale your campaigns when the time is right, because a simpler, data-driven structure adapts more smoothly to increased budgets or broader keyword targeting. The ultimate goal is to run a profitable, flexible campaign that can handle both market fluctuations and deliberate growth.
A handful of wise choices and a willingness to hold your nerve in the face of short-term anomalies can preserve your campaign’s profitability. Take a measured approach, trust that not every dip is a crisis, and keep a close eye on your results without sacrificing your entire account strategy at the first sign of trouble. By doing so, you stand to save considerable time, money, and stress—and create a Google Ads account capable of delivering genuine, long-term success.
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