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We audit Google Ads accounts for Shrewsbury and Shropshire businesses every week. The same mistakes come up again and again, and they’re costing local businesses hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds a month in wasted ad spend. Whether you’re running your own campaigns or paying an agency to manage them, the problems are almost always the same. Here are the biggest Google Ads mistakes we see, and exactly how to fix them.
1. Targeting too broad an area
This is one of the most common, and most expensive, mistakes we find. A local business that only serves Shrewsbury, Telford, and the surrounding Shropshire area is running ads that show across the entire country. Every single click from someone sitting in London, Manchester, or Edinburgh who will never use your services is money thrown away.
We’ve seen accounts where more than half the budget was going to clicks from people outside the service area. That’s not bad luck, it’s a setup problem. Google’s default geographic targeting settings are broader than most people realise, and if you don’t change them, you’re paying for attention from people who can’t become customers.
How to fix it: Set proper geographic targeting from the start. Use radius targeting centred on your business location, for a Shrewsbury plumber, a 15 to 20 mile radius covers your realistic service area without wasting budget on the rest of England. Crucially, make sure you set location options to “Presence” rather than “Presence or interest,” which is Google’s default and will still show your ads to people outside your area who are merely searching about it.
2. Using the wrong keyword match types
Keyword match types control how closely a search query needs to match your keyword before Google shows your ad. Get this wrong and you’ll pay for clicks from people who have no intention of hiring you. It’s one of the most misunderstood settings in Google Ads, and it causes enormous waste.
Broad match is the default setting, and it gives Google the widest possible leeway to show your ads. A Shrewsbury electrician bidding on “electrician” with broad match might find their ads appearing for searches like “electrician salary,” “how to become an electrician,” “electrician apprenticeship near me,” or “electrician TV show.” None of those people are looking for an electrician to hire, but you’re still paying when they click.
How to fix it: Use phrase match and exact match keywords instead of broad match, especially when you’re working with a limited budget. These give you far more control over which searches trigger your ads. And review your search terms report every week, this shows you the actual queries people typed before clicking your ad, and it’s the fastest way to spot wasted spend. See our guide to how much you should actually spend to make sure your budget can support the strategy you need.
3. No negative keywords
If match types are the lock, negative keywords are the bolt. Without them, you’re leaving the door wide open for irrelevant traffic. Negative keywords tell Google which searches you don’t want to appear for, and without a proper list, you’ll pay for clicks from people searching for jobs, DIY tutorials, free services, training courses, and salary information.
This is the single biggest source of wasted budget we find in the accounts we audit. It’s not unusual to see 30 to 50 percent of an entire monthly budget going to completely irrelevant clicks simply because no one has added negative keywords.
What we find most often: We audit Google Ads accounts every week. The most common finding? Businesses spending 30-50% of their budget on completely irrelevant clicks because they have no negative keywords.
How to fix it: Build a negative keyword list from day one, before your first ad goes live. For local service businesses, common negatives include: “jobs,” “salary,” “course,” “training,” “free,” “DIY,” “how to become,” “apprenticeship,” “volunteer,” and “qualifications.” Then add to the list every week based on your search terms report. This is not a set-it-once task, it’s ongoing maintenance that should happen every single week your campaign is running.
4. Sending traffic to your homepage
Your homepage tries to talk about everything your business does. It introduces your brand, lists your services, shows testimonials, and covers your service area. That’s fine for someone browsing your site, but it’s a terrible destination for someone who just searched for a specific service and clicked your ad.
When someone searches “emergency plumber Shrewsbury” and clicks your ad, they want to know three things: do you offer emergency plumbing, do you cover Shrewsbury, and how do they contact you right now? Your homepage buries those answers under everything else. Sending Google Ads traffic to your homepage is like answering every question with your CV, technically the information is in there somewhere, but no one has time to find it.
How to fix it: Create focused landing pages for each service or campaign you’re advertising. Each page should address the specific search intent, include one clear call to action, and make it as easy as possible for the visitor to take the next step. If you don’t have dedicated landing pages, that’s a website design issue worth addressing before you spend another pound on ads. The difference in conversion rates between a homepage and a well-built landing page is often two to three times higher. Relevant landing pages also improve your Quality Score, which means Google charges you less per click.
5. Not tracking conversions
Running Google Ads without conversion tracking is like running a shop with the lights off. You can hear people coming in and going out, but you have no idea what they’re doing, what they’re buying, or whether they’re the right customers. Without tracking, you can’t see which keywords, ads, or campaigns are generating actual enquiries, and which are just generating clicks that go nowhere.
We regularly audit accounts that have been running for months with no conversion tracking whatsoever. The business owner knows they’re spending money on ads. They might even know how many clicks they’re getting. But they have no idea whether those clicks are turning into phone calls, form submissions, or bookings. They’re guessing, and guessing gets expensive fast.
How to fix it: Set up Google Ads conversion tracking for every meaningful action on your website: phone calls, form submissions, booking requests, and email clicks. This isn’t optional, it’s the foundation that everything else is built on. Without conversion data, Google’s own algorithms can’t optimise your campaigns effectively, and you can’t make informed decisions about where to put your budget. If you’re not sure whether your tracking is set up properly, that’s one of the first things we check in our free audit.
6. Setting it and forgetting it
Google offers “Smart” campaigns and various automated settings that promise to handle everything for you. And to be fair, Google’s machine learning has improved significantly. But automated does not mean unattended. Google’s algorithms optimise for Google’s goals, which are not always your goals. Without human oversight, campaigns drift, budgets get spent on underperforming keywords, and ad copy goes stale.
We’ve seen accounts that were set up reasonably well on day one, then left untouched for six months. By the time we looked at them, the search terms had drifted so far from the original intent that the account was essentially running a completely different campaign to the one that was originally built.
How to fix it: Check your search terms report weekly. Adjust bids based on what’s performing. Pause underperforming keywords and add new ones. Test different ad copy. Review your geographic performance. A well-managed Google Ads campaign improves every single month because someone is paying attention, making small adjustments, and learning from the data. If no one is doing this, you’re paying for a campaign that’s getting worse over time, not better.
7. Giving up too soon
We hear this all the time: “I tried Google Ads and they don’t work.” When we dig into it, the business spent a hundred pounds over a week, got a handful of clicks, didn’t get any phone calls, and pulled the plug. That’s not a failed campaign, it’s a campaign that never had a chance to succeed.
Google Ads need data to optimise. The algorithms need enough clicks and conversions to learn which searches, times, and audiences produce the best results. A week of low spend simply isn’t enough data for any meaningful conclusions.
How to fix it: Commit to at least four to six weeks with a meaningful budget, a minimum of five hundred pounds per month for most local services. Judge results over a quarter, not a weekend. If you’re not sure what the right budget is for your industry and area, our guide to Google Ads budgets for Shrewsbury businesses breaks it down in detail. If Ads aren’t working, SEO might be a better starting point, but don’t write off paid search until you’ve given it a proper test.
8. How to tell if your Google Ads are being managed properly
Whether you’re managing campaigns yourself or paying someone else to do it, here’s a simple checklist to assess whether your Google Ads are getting the attention they need:
- Are you getting monthly reports? Not just a dashboard screenshot, a proper report that explains what happened, why, and what’s being changed.
- Can you see your cost per lead? If you don’t know what each enquiry costs, you can’t judge whether your ads are profitable.
- Are negative keywords being added regularly? Ask to see the negative keyword list and when it was last updated.
- Is someone reviewing your search terms? This should be happening weekly. If it’s not, irrelevant clicks are eating your budget.
- Are you seeing A/B test results? Ad copy, landing pages, and bidding strategies should all be tested and refined over time.
If the answer to any of these questions is no, your campaign needs attention. You might be getting results despite the lack of management, but you’re almost certainly leaving money on the table, or worse, wasting it entirely.
“Bad Google Ads aren’t just a waste of money, they convince business owners that Google Ads don’t work. They do. They just need to be set up properly.”
Every one of these mistakes is fixable, and most of them can be fixed quickly once you know what to look for. If you’re running Google Ads for your business, or paying someone else to, and you’re not confident you’re getting the best possible return, we can help. We offer a free Google Ads audit where we’ll review your account, identify exactly what’s going wrong, and show you how to fix it. No obligation, no jargon, just a clear, honest assessment. You can also learn more about how we manage Google Ads campaigns for local businesses across Shrewsbury and Shropshire.
