Why Google Ads wastes money in a big city

A Google Ads account in Greater Manchester wastes money in eight predictable places, and most of them are default settings rather than mistakes anyone made on purpose: location set to interest as well as presence, a radius drawn wide enough to reach Liverpool and Leeds, close variants letting in searches nobody bid on, search partners and display expansion switched on, auto-apply recommendations running, a conversion action that fires on a page refresh, and ads served in hours when nobody answers the phone. A city the size of Manchester makes every one of those leaks bigger, because there are more people to show the ad to who were never going to buy.

Leak one: presence or interest

Every new campaign defaults to showing ads to people in your locations and to people who have shown interest in them. In a city that hosts two Premier League clubs, an international airport and the Christmas Markets, the interested crowd is enormous and mostly elsewhere. A Salford Quays clinic on the default setting pays for searches from someone in Birmingham reading about a weekend in Manchester. The fix is one radio button, location options, presence only, and it is the first thing we change on every account.

Leak two: the radius that swallows two other cities

A thirty-mile circle around the city centre takes in Liverpool to the west, Warrington, Preston, Blackburn, most of Cheshire and the edge of Leeds. It looks generous and sensible on the map. For a business that serves Trafford and Stockport it means paying for clicks from people a ninety-minute drive away who will ring, find out where you are, and go elsewhere. The boroughs exist as targetable locations; use them, and add a small radius only around the places you actually attend.

Leak three: close variants

Exact match no longer means exact. Google matches searches it judges to have the same meaning, and its judgement is generous. A keyword for 'boiler service manchester' will show for boiler servicing courses, boiler service jobs and boiler service manuals, and the Search Terms report is the only place you find out. On a big city's search volume, the variants arrive faster than on a small town's, so the weekly read that adds negatives is not optional.

Leak four: search partners

Search partners are the other sites Google places search ads on, and their traffic converts worse than Google's own results in nearly every account we have opened. The setting is on by default at campaign level. Switch it off, run for a month, and switch it back on only if the partner segment in the report earns its place with a cost per conversion you would accept.

Leak five: display expansion

A Search campaign can be told to spend its leftover budget on the Display Network, and by default it is. That takes money set aside for people searching for a plumber in Bolton and spends it on banner impressions across news sites and apps, at a fraction of the conversion rate. A Search budget should be a Search budget. If Display is wanted, it gets its own campaign with its own budget and its own report.

Leak six: auto-apply recommendations

Google will, if allowed, apply its own recommendations to your account without asking: add broad match keywords, raise budgets, create new ads, expand targeting. Each is written to increase spend and reach. Auto-apply is the setting that turns an account you manage into one Google manages for its own benefit, and it is the second thing we switch off. The recommendations themselves are worth reading, because occasionally one is right; the automation is not.

Leak seven: the conversion that counts a refresh

Smart Bidding learns from conversions, so a conversion action that counts the wrong thing teaches it the wrong lesson at your expense. The common faults are a thank-you page that counts every time it loads, a button click counted as a lead, a phone call of any length counted as a conversion, and the same form counted twice by two tags. Every action should fire once for one real enquiry, and the way to know is to submit the form yourself and watch the account.

Leak eight: ads at the wrong hours

A call-based business whose phone is answered from eight until six is paying for clicks at eleven at night from people who will ring a competitor in the morning. The ad schedule should follow the hours the enquiry can be answered, or a message and a form should be ready for the ones that cannot. Matchdays and the Christmas Markets bring their own timing: an Ancoats restaurant wants bookings before the game, not during it.

How much the leaks add up to

We do not publish a percentage, because every account is different and the number would be invented. What we can say is that on the accounts we check, the search terms that could never have bought are always the largest single leak, and the location and partner settings are the next two. The fix for all eight takes one afternoon, and the money saved keeps arriving every month afterwards.

None of the eight needs a new agency, a new website or a bigger budget. They need someone to open the account, look at the settings Google chose, and change the ones that suit Google better than they suit a business in Oldham.

If you would like us to check all eight on your account, free and within three days, the free check does exactly that; tell us your customer ID and what the ads are for.