What are the most common mistakes plaguing Google Ads practitioners today?
It's been one year since I re-launched this newsletter as The Insider, sharing real challenges from my real Google Ads coaching clients with you in every issue. I went back over all 36 issues I've sent to you to understand:
- What are your most common problems?
- What are my best solutions?
Four key themes emerged, so let's explore them together and ensure that YOU avoid these mistakes in 2026 and beyond.
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1. Foundational Failures: Conversion Tracking & Data Integrity
The most critical and frequent challenge I've shared across many issues of The Insider is a poor data foundation, primarily due to missing or incorrect conversion tracking.
Whether it's not having conversion tracking at all, counting page views as conversions, or still counting page views as conversions, this is the #1 silent killer of business owners' Google Ads campaigns.
How to avoid foundational failures
- Verify conversion tracking: Ensure you are tracking meaningful actions (like form submissions or purchases), not just page views. You can check this by adding the "Segment" for "Conversion action" to your campaign view, to see what's included in the "Conversions" column for your campaigns.
- Question questionable numbers: If Google Ads data looks too good (or bad!) to be true, investigate the root cause. For example, a campaign with no conversions could actually be driving conversions, but your conversion tracking isn't working. Conversely, a campaign with a 50% conversion rate is probably counting things like page views or add-to-carts that are not actually conversions.
- Look beyond the platform: Don't rely solely on Google Ads data; check results in Google Analytics or third-party tools like Shopify to get a holistic view of performance.
2. Strategic Sloppiness: Keyword & Campaign Structure
Should you segment or consolidate ad groups? Should you use Broad Match or Exact match keywords? There's no "one size fits all" answer to these core questions, but I do have a few guiding principles to help you determine the right strategy for your Google Ads account.
How to avoid strategic sloppiness
- Segment by intent: Organize your search keywords by theme, with about 5-15 keywords per ad group. For example, if you offer residential cleaning and commercial cleaning, those should be in 2 separate ad groups, and potentially even 2 separate campaigns because the buyer and price point are completely different. But if you offer residential cleaning and home cleaning, that's essentially the same thing, and those keywords can live together in the same ad group. The same principle applies when you're targeting different audiences: segment by intent.
- If you're small, start small: For smaller businesses or Google Ads beginners, broad match is usually not the best choice. When your budget is convservative, your keywords should be conservative - and that means exact match for more precision and control.
- Review your search terms regularly: Once your campaigns are up and running, check your search terms report weekly. If you see lots of irrelevant searches, don't immediately reach for the negatives! Address the root cause of the issue, which could be overly broad keywords, the wrong bid strategy, etc. Then, once you've fixed the problem, determine if a few negatives are needed on top.
3. Metric Misinterpretation: Lacking Experience & Expertise
A lot of the Google Ads problems I see arise from the practitioner simply not knowing how to diagnose the underlying issue, so they try to fix the wrong thing. That's exactly why I created this newsletter - to help you build those skills! It's also why I do case-based problem solving workshops for agencies (and even for Google sales teams!). If you've been trained on "tricks" and "hacks" rather than the fundamentals of how Google Ads works, you're going to crash and burn when the unexpected inevitably happens in your account.
How to avoid metric misinterpretation
- Clear the basics first: If your Search CTR or CPC is too low, the most common culprits are Display Network in your Search campaign and/or Search Partners in your Search campaign. Yes, I know you know that already. Yes, I still see this at least once a week on coaching calls.
- Structure your reasoning: When CPA or ROAS or any other metric drastically shifts, don't freak out or waste hours spinning in circles. Build a hypothesis, investigate it, then test it. For example, if your CPA suddenly skyrockets, it means that either your CPCs went up, or your conversion rate went down. That's it. So look at the data, determine which one it was, then figure out why THAT happened. In this example, CPC spikes were the culprit, so that narrowed down the potential causes to just 6 things to investigate for changes: bidding, Quality Score, competition, query demand, search term matching, or ad text.
- Quality Score can almost always be improved: If I hear one more person say that Quality Score doesn't matter because it's a diagnostic tool and not an auction input, I may scream! Let's clear this up once and for all. The "Quality Score" metrics you see in your Keyword Report are diagnostic tools. That number from 1-10 is not an auction input. HOWEVER, your actual ad quality - which Google does calculate, but does not tell you - is a key auction input and determines your ad rank. To quote Google directly, "Ad quality is an estimate of the experience that users have when they see your search ads and the quality of their experience once they reach your landing page. Our assessment of the quality of your ad is summarized in your Quality Score, which you can monitor in your Google Ads account. Higher ad quality generally leads to better performance, including better ad positions and lower cost." And so that I can't be accused of selectively quoting, here is the section of that page that most Google Ads practitioners misinterpret: "Quality Score is a diagnostic tool that can help you identify ads with a lower user experience than average. This tool gives further insights on whether you should focus on improving your ad relevance, clickthrough rate, or landing page experience. Your Quality Score is shown on a scale of 1-10 based on estimates of your performance compared to other advertisers. Note that while we provide this diagnostic score to help you identify which of your ads might need quality improvements, these scores are not inputs in the ad auction. Use Quality Score to diagnose low quality ads, rather than trying to optimize the 1-10 score you receive." To recap, your Quality Score is a summary of your ad quality, the Score from 1-10 is not an auction input, but ad quality itself is ABSOLUTELY a key auction input. Okay, /end rant/
4. Unreasonable Expectations: Budgets, Opportunity & Scaling
There's a final category of mistake that I often see plaguing my agency and in-house Google Ads coaching clients: making changes because your boss or client wants you to, even when you know it's not the right move. Setting realistic goals, manging stakeholder expectations, understanding opportunity size... while these aren't considered "Google Ads skills," they are an absolute necessity for anyone managing Google Ads today.
How to avoid unreasonable expectations
- Communicate and educate stakeholders: Yes, it is your job to educate your managers / colleagues / clients about the nuances of Google Ads, such as the impact of conversion lag or the natural ebb and flow of performance. Resist the urge to "just do something" if there's no strategy behind it.
- Opportunity isn't infinite: In order to show a Search ad, someone has to be searching for something that matches your keywords. If you're already dominating your core keywords with high impression share, then increasing your budget will only inflate your costs; you need an expansion strategy if you want to continue to grow. That may mean more keywords, looser keywords, or testing audience targeting with Demand Gen.
So what does this all mean for you?
The most common thread across all of my Google Ads advice is the shift from a reactive, control-focused approach to a holistic, data-informed strategy. I love the analogy of your Google Ads campaigns as a house: if the foundation (conversion tracking) is flawed, the entire structure (targeting, bidding, and creative) will crumble. You need to ensure the right people are arriving at house (audiences/keywords), that they are being invited in with the correct message (ad copy/creative), and that once inside, they can easily find what they're looking for (conversion rate optimization).
Need some renovations on your Google Ads house? Book a call with me to get started now.
