The most common Google Ads mistakes are tracking the wrong thing (or nothing at all), sending traffic to weak landing pages, and letting Google’s defaults spend your budget in places you didn’t intend.
We see this a lot with Orlando-area accounts: clicks look fine, but calls and booked appointments stay flat because the campaign is optimized around traffic, not outcomes. Fixing the basics usually improves lead quality fast without needing a bigger budget.
Common Google Ads mistakes we see most often
| Mistake | What it causes | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| No or broken conversion tracking | Google optimizes for clicks, not leads, and you cannot trust ROAS or CPA. | Track the actions that equal revenue: calls from ads, form submits, online bookings, and qualified chats. Import offline conversions when you can (scheduled, showed, sold). |
| Wrong location settings | Paying for clicks from people who are not in your service area. | For local service businesses, target “presence” (people in your locations) and exclude areas you will not serve. Orlando tourism can create “interest” traffic that never converts for local-only services. |
| Overly broad keywords and match types | Irrelevant search terms, wasted spend, and low-quality leads. | Start with tight intent terms (service + city, service + near me). Use phrase/exact where it fits, then expand carefully once search term data proves quality. |
| Missing negative keywords | Ads show for research, DIY, jobs, cheap/free, or unrelated services. | Build a negative list early (jobs, salary, training, DIY, free, cheap, definition, how to, Amazon, used). Review search terms weekly at first. |
| Mixing too many services in one campaign/ad group | Weak relevance, lower click-through rate, and higher costs per lead. | Separate by intent: one campaign per core service line, and ad groups that match the exact service wording customers search. |
| Sending paid traffic to the homepage | Higher bounce rate and fewer calls/forms because the page is not built for one decision. | Use a dedicated landing page per service with clear offer, trust proof, FAQs, and one primary call-to-action. If you need help tightening the page, our landing page and website design work pairs well with PPC. |
| Running Search and Display together (or letting expansions roam) | Budget leaks into low-intent placements and weak traffic. | Keep Search separate from Display/YouTube. If you test Display, cap budgets and judge it on conversions, not clicks. |
| Auto-applied changes without review | Account shifts that increase spend or broaden targeting without your approval. | Turn off auto-apply items you do not want, then review recommendations manually on a schedule. |
| Not using ad assets (extensions) | Lower ad rank and less information for searchers. | Add sitelinks, call, location, structured snippets, and callouts that match your services and service area. |
| Judging performance by CTR only | “Good-looking” reports while cost per lead and lead quality get worse. | Run your account on a small scoreboard: cost per qualified lead, conversion rate, booked rate, and close rate. Our metrics tracking FAQ explains a simple way to think about performance without getting lost. |
A quick self-check you can do in 15 minutes
- Open your campaign settings and confirm location targeting is “presence” for local-only services.
- Pull the Search terms report and add negatives for obvious mismatches.
- Confirm conversions are firing correctly (test a form, test a call flow, confirm attribution).
- Compare what you sell vs what your ads promise vs what your landing page says. Any mismatch usually drops conversion rate.
If you want, we can audit your account and point out the exact settings and search terms causing waste, then map fixes by impact. That’s the fastest way to get your Google Ads mistakes cleaned up and your budget pointed at leads that can actually become customers, especially in a competitive market like Orlando. You can see how we run and manage campaigns on our PPC management service page.
