Every month the Google Ads report arrives: impressions up, clicks up, a line going the right way. It looks like progress. But a report full of activity can hide an ad account that isn't bringing in a single customer.
There's only one question worth asking of your ads: are they bringing in customers for less than those customers are worth? Here's how to answer it yourself, without becoming an expert in Google Ads.
Clicks aren't customers
Impressions are how often your ad was shown. Clicks are how often someone tapped it. Click-through rate is the share who did. They tell you whether the ad caught attention, which matters, but none of them pays a bill.
What matters is what happened after the click: did they call, fill in the form, book or buy? Those are conversions, and the number that sits next to them is cost per lead, what you paid in ads for each one. If your report opens with clicks and never gets to leads, that's the first thing to ask about.
A report full of activity can hide an ad account that isn't bringing in a single customer.
First, check the tracking is real
Every number that matters depends on conversion tracking being set up properly, and it often isn't. Before you judge the ads, check what's being counted:
- Calls. Calls straight from the ad, and calls from people who visited the website first. Both can be tracked, and for many service businesses they're most of the leads.
- Forms and bookings. Counted when someone actually sends the form or confirms the booking, not when they open the page.
- Nothing that isn't a lead. If page views or time on site are counted as conversions, the account will look busy and the ads will chase the wrong thing.
Test it yourself: send a form and check it appears as a conversion the next day. To see your ads without paying for a click, use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool in Google Ads rather than searching and clicking your own ad.
The numbers that matter
Once the tracking is right, these are the numbers worth a look each month:
- Cost per lead. What you spent, divided by the leads you got. Compare it with what a customer is worth to you, not with a figure from someone else's industry.
- Lead quality. How many of those leads were real enquiries for work you do, in places you serve. Keep a simple note of it, or let your CRM track it.
- Search terms. The words people actually typed before your ad showed. More on this below; it's where most wasted money hides.
- Impression share. How often your ad showed out of the times it could have. A low share on your best searches can mean the budget runs out early in the day.
If you sell online, add ROAS, the revenue your ads bring in against what they cost. For a service business, a value per lead, based on how often leads become jobs, does the same job.
Read the search terms report
Your keywords are what you asked for. Search terms are what you got. Google often shows your ad for searches that are related to your keywords but not the same, and that's where budgets leak.
In Google Ads, open Insights and reports, then Search terms. Look down the list for searches that will never become customers: people looking for jobs, for free or do-it-yourself help, for a town you don't serve, or for something you don't offer. Add each one as a negative keyword, and your ads stop showing for it.
Performance Max campaigns show less detail about searches than ordinary search campaigns, so if most of your budget runs through one, ask what you can see about where it's going.
Red flags
Any one of these is worth a conversation with whoever runs your ads:
- Plenty of clicks, hardly any calls. Either the wrong people are clicking, or the page they land on isn't doing its job.
- Leads you can't trace. If nobody can say which ads or searches brought last month's leads, the account is being run on guesswork.
- Ads shown outside your area. Check the location setting. Google's default reaches people who are interested in your area as well as those in it; for most local businesses, "presence" (people in or regularly in your area) is the safer choice.
- Every ad goes to the homepage. People who searched for one service should land on a page about that service.
- A report with no cost per lead. If it isn't there, ask for it.
A simple monthly check
You don't need to log in every day. Once a month, run through this:
- What did we spend, how many real leads came in, and what did each one cost?
- Is that better or worse than last month, and is it still well under what a customer is worth?
- Did the search terms report show anything we should block?
- Did the landing pages load, and did the phone number and forms work when we tested them?
- What's being tested next: a new ad, a new page, a new search?
One note on patience: a new campaign, or one that's just been changed, needs a few weeks to settle before the numbers mean much. Judge it on leads over a month, not on one quiet week.
Where we'd start
If you only do one thing, make sure calls and forms are tracked as conversions and that you can see a cost per lead. Everything else, from bidding to budgets, is guesswork until that's in place.
If you'd rather have someone do it, that's what our ads service is: tracking set up first, then search ads and Local Services Ads run around real leads, with a plain-English report each month. And if you're still deciding where to advertise at all, start with Google Ads vs Meta Ads.
