Why is my Google Ads not getting leads? 9 fixes

Every week someone shows me a Google Ads account that is spending money and producing nothing. Clicks are coming in. The phone is quiet. The good news is that the cause is rarely mysterious. Here are the nine checks I run, in the order I run them, because the early ones fix the most accounts.

1. Is tracking actually counting your leads?

Before anything else, confirm that leads are really missing. In a surprising number of accounts the enquiries are arriving, but Google Ads is not counting them. The form thank-you page has no conversion tag, calls are not tracked, or the tag fires twice and confuses the bidding.

• Submit your own form and check the conversion appears in Google Ads within a few hours.
• Make sure phone calls from ads and from your website are tracked as conversions.
• Check each conversion action counts once per enquiry, not every time someone reloads the page.

2. Are you paying for the wrong searches?

Open the search terms report for the last 30 days and sort by cost. This shows what people actually typed, not the keywords you chose. For most service businesses, a large share of spend goes on searches that can never become clients: jobs, training, free advice, do it yourself, and competitors by name.

Add those as negative keywords. Then do it again every week. It is the single habit that saves the most money in Google Ads.

3. Does the landing page match the search?

If someone searches "emergency boiler repair" and lands on your homepage, they have to work out whether you can help. Many will not bother. Each main service needs a page that repeats what they searched for, shows proof, and makes the next step obvious: a phone number, a short form and a booking link.

4. Is the bidding goal right?

Smart bidding is only as smart as the goal you give it. Bidding to maximise clicks will buy the cheapest clicks, which are rarely the best. Bidding to maximise conversions works well, but only when conversions are tracked correctly and there are enough of them for Google to learn from. With very few conversions a month, a simpler strategy with tight control often works better until volume builds.

5. Do your ads say why you?

Ads that say "Experienced local solicitors" look like every other ad on the page. Specific ads win: the exact service, the area, a reason to trust you and a clear next step. "Fixed-fee conveyancing in Leeds. Quote in 1 hour. SRA regulated." gives a searcher three reasons to click your ad rather than the next one.

6. Are your locations and hours right?

Check that the campaign targets people in your area, not people "interested in" your area, which can include people abroad. Then check your schedule. If nobody answers the phone after 6pm, either pause call ads in the evening or make sure out-of-hours enquiries get an instant reply.

7. Is the budget big enough to learn?

A budget that buys ten clicks a day across ten services teaches you nothing. Concentrate the budget on your most valuable service in your core area until it produces enquiries at a cost you are happy with, then expand. Spreading a small budget thinly is one of the most common reasons accounts never take off.

8. Are the leads arriving but going cold?

Sometimes Google Ads is working and the problem starts after the enquiry. If leads wait hours for a reply, many will already have called someone else. An automatic email and text within a minute, and a call from your team soon after, can turn a "Google Ads does not work" account into one that does.

9. Is anything simply broken?

Last, check the basics. Does the form send? Does the phone number in the ad ring through? Are any ads disapproved? Has a payment failed? It sounds obvious, but a broken form can quietly cost a month of leads.

About the author

Hafeez R, Senior Paid Media Specialist. Hafeez runs paid search and paid social, from Google Ads and Microsoft Ads to retargeting and ChatGPT Ads, with every campaign judged on lead quality, not clicks.

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