Ever launched a Google Ads campaign only to watch your budget vanish with nothing to show for it? Yeah, it happens with most businesses.

In fact, many businesses across Australia lose thousands monthly because of simple Google Ads mistakes that could’ve been avoided from day one. And the worst part is, most of this wasted ad spend comes from setup errors you can fix yourself.

We’ve worked with hundreds of businesses struggling with online advertising, and the same problems keep appearing. Wrong keyword targeting, missing conversion tracking, and poor campaign structure drain budgets faster than you’d expect.

This article breaks down the major Google Ads mistakes beginners make and shows you exactly how to stop wasting money.

Stay with us to learn where your ad spend goes and which fixes deliver real results.

Conversion Tracking: The Setup Most Businesses Ignore

Conversion tracking measures which clicks turn into sales, phone calls, or form submissions for your services. It shows you exactly what amount your ad spend produces and which customers your Google Ads account actually brought in.

The truth is, most businesses skip this step completely. They launch campaigns without proper tracking and then wonder why nothing seems to work. You’re spending money daily but have no clue which keywords bring paying customers versus window shoppers who just browse and leave.

Here’s what makes this worse. When you import conversions from Google Analytics instead of setting up native tracking in your Google Ads account, you get incomplete revenue data. The performance data doesn’t match up, and you can’t see which ads generate sales.

That’s why you need to fix conversion tracking straight away before you spend another dollar. Without it, tracking conversions properly becomes impossible, and you’re basically guessing where your money goes.

Negative Keywords: The Fast Fix for Wasted Spend

Negative keywords stop your ads from showing on irrelevant searches, which saves you money on clicks that were never going to convert.

We’ve found through hands-on work that businesses lose hundreds of dollars monthly because they never add negative keywords to their Google Ads campaigns. Your ads appear for searches like just the letter “C” when you sell printer cartridges (this happens more often than you’d think). Each useless click costs money, and the traffic goes to the wrong people entirely.

Without a negative keyword list, Google shows your ads to anyone remotely related to your product. So you need to block irrelevant searches before they drain your budget.

The good news is that this fix only takes minutes. You just open your Google Ads account, click on Keywords in the left menu, then select Negative Keywords. Add the terms you want to exclude, and Google stops showing your ads for those searches immediately.

Useful Tip: Add negative keywords weekly based on what you see in your search terms report. If you notice wasted spend on certain phrases, add them as negatives right away to stop the bleeding.

What Does Your Search Terms Report Tell You?

The search terms report shows the exact phrases people typed into Google before clicking your ad. That means it reveals what users actually searched for, showing mismatches between your intent and Google’s interpretation of your keywords.

You may even find out your coffee shop ads trigger “espresso machine repair” searches, which explains why no one buys. That’s wasted budget on irrelevant searches you never wanted.

And believe it or not, most accounts ignore this report because they don’t realise how much money it saves them. They miss both money-wasting search terms and high-performing ones to expand on.

The report basically tells you how users found your ads and whether Google understood your keywords correctly. Which is exactly why you should check your search terms weekly to spot problems early.

Once you understand what triggers your ads, you’ll notice patterns in user behaviour that point to other important issues with how your keywords are set up in the first place.

Keyword Match Types Explained for Beginners

Keyword match types control how closely a search query needs to match your keywords before your ads appear.

Google gives advertisers three targeting options: broad match, phrase match, and exact match. Each one affects how much traffic your campaign gets and which potential customers see your ads.

Let’s break down the two common mistakes people make with match types:

1. Using Only One Match Type Limits Reach

Mixing match types helps you reach more potential customers without losing control over who sees your ads. That means, if your campaign only uses exact match keywords, you need to add phrase and broad match variations to get in front of more relevant searches.

Google recommends mixing broad, phrase, and exact match keywords to balance control with reach. The right combination lowers your cost per click while expanding your targeting beyond just one approach.

Meanwhile, sticking to exact matches only means you miss variations of search terms your customers type in. While your competitors capture relevant traffic from related searches, your ads stay hidden from buyers.

2. Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group

Ad groups where you stuff with dozens of unrelated keywords make it harder for your ad copy to match what people searched for.

Cramming 40 keywords into one ad group means your Google Ads can’t match what people searched for. And when that happens, Google penalises mismatched ads with lower Quality Scores. Ultimately, it just drives up what you pay for every single click.

In our experience, keeping under 20-25 tightly related keywords per group improves how relevant your ads appear. Smaller groups help your campaign deliver better results because each ad speaks directly to what users want.

Wrong Keyword Grouping Kills Quality Score

Quality Score measures how well your keywords, ads, and landing pages match each other and the searcher’s intent. It’s basically Google’s way of grading how relevant your entire setup is to what people want.

This is where most people go wrong with their Google Ads campaign. Putting “men’s hoodies” and “blue t-shirts” together confuses Google about what your ad really promotes. Your Quality Score drops because your ad about hoodies sends people to a page selling t-shirts, which creates a mismatch that Google penalises.

Every click can cost 30-50% more when the Quality Score is low, since Google charges more for ads it thinks aren’t helpful to searchers.

The solution: perfect targeting starts with keeping related keywords together so your ads match what people searched for.

For example, create one ad group just for “men’s hoodies” with keywords like “buy men’s hoodie,” “men’s pullover hoodie,” and “hoodie for men.” Then make a separate group for t-shirts with its own focused keywords. This tight grouping tells Google exactly what you’re selling and who should see each ad.

Trust us, when you organise keywords this way, your cost per click drops noticeably, and your ad spend delivers better results.

Why Your Ad Copy Gets Ignored (And Wastes Clicks)

Ad copy is the text people read before deciding whether to click your ad or skip it entirely, and most businesses write copy that sounds like everyone else’s.

Generic headlines like “Buy Now” or “Best Prices” don’t tell target audiences why your business is different from competitors (we’ve all been there). These ads could work for any company, which means nothing catches the eye of users scrolling through Google Ads results.

Your ad lacks a clear benefit statement, so people skip it to click on ads that promise something specific to their needs. That’s where understanding consumer behaviour helps. Potential customers want to know what they get before clicking, not after.

Yet, most marketers miss this completely. They’re paying for an ad position but getting low click-through rates because the copy feels identical to every other ad. The result is wasted ad spend on impressions that never turn into clicks.

Good ad copy needs to deliver results by showing value upfront. But even the best ads fail if they send people to the wrong place.

Landing Pages That Lose You Money

Sometimes the simplest mistakes cost the most money with landing pages. You may not even realise your site is pushing away the traffic you’re paying for.

Here’s how landing pages kill your conversions:

• Mismatched Messages: If your ad promises free shipping, but the landing page doesn’t mention it anywhere, people bounce immediately because they feel misled.
• Mobile Problems: Most Google Ads traffic comes from phones these days (more than 62% in the second quarter of 2025). So your landing pages need to work perfectly on mobile, or you’re throwing money away. Visitors also leave when buttons don’t work, or text is too small to read on mobile screens.
• Slow Loading: Slow loading times mean people abandon your landing pages before they even appear. In fact, 32% of users leave sites that take longer than three seconds to load. You’re paying for each click but losing conversions because the page takes forever to load.

Bottom Line: Fix your landing pages so ads and content match. When they work together, users stick around, and your Google Ads spend actually delivers results.

Where Does Your Google Ads Budget Go?

Most business budgets leak money through location settings, time-of-day bidding, and device targeting that wasn’t configured properly.

Let’s be real here. You set location targeting to Brisbane, but your Google Ads still show to people 50km outside your service area. That’s wasted budget on paid advertising that reaches the wrong geographic location entirely (and the damage adds up fast).

Half your ad spend drains after business hours when no one’s available to answer calls from your ads. The thing is, Google keeps running your campaigns 24/7 unless you schedule specific hours. So poor targeting like this is one of the common reasons Google Ads campaigns fail to deliver conversions.

On top of that, desktop bids match mobile bids even though mobile traffic converts at half the rate for your business. You’re spending the same amount per click on both devices, but mobile users might just be browsing while desktop users are ready to buy. That difference costs you money on every mobile click that goes nowhere.

These targeting mistakes create wasted spend you don’t even notice until you check where the money goes each month.

Start Fixing These Mistakes Today

Google Ads mistakes like missing conversion tracking, ignoring negative keywords, and poor landing pages drain thousands monthly from Australian businesses. However, you can fix each one this week and stop the wasted ad spend immediately.

Start with conversion tracking since you can’t improve a campaign without knowing what works. Then add negative keywords, clean up your keyword grouping, and match your landing pages to your ads. These changes build a stronger strategy that delivers results.

Don’t wait until down the track when your budget’s gone. Businesses that fix these Google Ads mistakes early see a strong ROI from digital advertising.

If you need help getting your campaigns running properly, contact us at SlamStop. We’ve helped hundreds of businesses across Australia turn failing campaigns around.