Google Ads is unforgiving of small mistakes. A wrong setting you never notice can waste a third of your budget for months. These are the ones that come up most often on small business accounts, and how to avoid each.

1. Sending every click to the home page

The ad promises "emergency plumber Eastbourne" and drops the visitor on a general home page where they have to hunt. Most leave.

Avoid it: send each ad to a page about that specific service, with the offer and a clear next step near the top.

2. Running with no conversion tracking

Without it you cannot tell which keywords and ads produce enquiries, so you are optimising on guesswork.

Avoid it: set up conversion tracking for form submissions, calls and any bookings before you spend a penny.

3. Broad match with no negative keywords

Broad match lets Google show your ad for anything it considers related. Without a negative keyword list you end up paying for "free", "jobs", "how to do it yourself" and worse.

Avoid it: start with phrase and exact match, and build a negative keyword list from day one. Review the search terms report weekly and add new negatives.

4. Bidding on terms with no buying intent

Ranking for "what does a new boiler cost" brings clicks, but many of those people are months away from buying, if they buy at all.

Avoid it: put most of the budget on terms that signal intent to act now, like "boiler installation" plus your town. Use informational terms sparingly, if at all.

5. Ignoring the search terms report

This report shows the actual searches that triggered your ads, as opposed to the keywords you chose. It is where the waste hides.

Avoid it: check it at least weekly. Add irrelevant terms as negatives, and promote good ones you had not thought of.

6. Letting Google auto apply recommendations

Google can automatically apply its own suggestions to your account. Some help. Others broaden your targeting or raise your bids in ways that suit Google more than you.

Avoid it: turn off auto apply. Review recommendations yourself and accept only the ones that make sense.

7. Location settings too wide

The default location setting can target people who are simply interested in your area, not physically in it, and the radius is often larger than you would choose.

Avoid it: set location to "presence" so you only reach people actually in your area, and tighten the radius to where you genuinely work.

8. No ad assets

Assets, previously called extensions, add extra lines to your ad: phone number, location, links to specific pages, prices. They make your ad bigger and more useful at no extra cost.

Avoid it: add every asset type that applies to your business.

9. Setting it and forgetting it

An account left alone drifts. Costs creep up, irrelevant searches slip in, ads go stale.

Avoid it: short weekly checks and a proper monthly review. PPC is a tending job, not a build once job.

10. Judging it on clicks and impressions

A report full of impressions and a healthy clickthrough rate tells you nothing about whether the phone rang.

Avoid it: judge the account on cost per enquiry and cost per sale. Everything else is a supporting detail.

11. Not protecting your own brand name

Competitors can bid on your business name. If you are not bidding on it too, they can appear above your own listing when someone searches for you specifically.

Avoid it: run a cheap brand campaign on your own name. Brand clicks are usually inexpensive and the traffic is your warmest.

The takeaway

Most wasted Google Ads spend traces back to this list: weak landing pages, no conversion tracking, loose keyword matching, no negatives, ignoring the search terms report, and judging success on clicks. Fix those and a modest budget goes a lot further.

If you would rather hand it to someone who does this every day, Koprio's paid advertising service manages Google Ads for small businesses across East Sussex from a fixed monthly fee, with monthly reporting on enquiries and cost per enquiry. Get in touch for a free account review, or read how PPC works for the background.