Google Ads · Troubleshooting
Most failing accounts have one of six problems. Check them in this order and you will usually find the cause within an hour.
First decide what “not working” means
Check tracking before changing anything else
Fix the funnel stage that breaks
Tell us what you need and we’ll get back to you. Or book a free 30-minute call. Or call 954-539-5678.
Google Ads usually stop working for one of six reasons: the ads are not showing, conversion tracking is broken, targeting is too loose, match types let in irrelevant searches, the landing page does not convert, or the budget is spread too thin. Check them in that order. Start by working out where things break: no impressions, clicks but no leads, or leads that never become customers. Each points to a different fix.
Do not change bidding, budgets and ads all at once. Find the stage that fails, fix it, and give the account a week or two of data before judging again.
Ads are not showing at all. This is usually a status, policy, billing, budget or targeting problem.
People arrive and leave. Look at search terms, landing pages and tracking.
Leads come in but do not close. Look at lead quality, follow-up speed and which campaigns they come from.
Pull the last 30 days of impressions, clicks, conversions and cost by campaign. The stage where numbers drop off is where to look.
Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool rather than searching for your own ad on Google. Searching yourself adds ad impressions to your statistics; Google says the tool avoids that.
Many accounts “stop working” because tracking broke after a website change. Bidding then optimizes on nothing, or on the wrong thing.
Open the search terms report. If you see job seekers, DIY searches, competitors’ names you did not intend to target or services you do not offer, your match types are too broad for your setup or your negative keywords are thin. Broad match works best with Smart Bidding and solid conversion data; without those, phrase and exact match on your core services are safer.
A quick test: add up the cost of irrelevant search terms in the last 30 days. If it is more than a small fraction of spend, this is a main cause.
Book a free 30-minute call. We look at your Google Ads, tracking and landing pages and tell you what we would change first. No obligation. Pick a time.
Our guide to landing pages versus home pages for ads and our conversion rate tips cover what to fix.
A small budget split across many campaigns, services and cities gives each one too few clicks to produce leads or to teach automated bidding anything. Concentrate on your most profitable service and area until it works, then expand. Our article on what Google Ads costs shows how to work out a budget from the leads you need.
If leads arrive but sales do not, check the human side. How fast are calls answered? How quickly are forms followed up? Are calls going to voicemail during business hours? Paid leads cool quickly. Listen to a sample of recorded calls if you have call tracking. Sometimes the ads are fine and the follow-up is not.
If you want to check your own account before calling anyone, work through this list in order:
If every item passes and results are still poor, the problem may be the market itself: very high click costs, or a service people do not search for. That is a channel decision rather than a settings problem, and our comparison of SEO and PPC can help.
JLB USA has done marketing for growing businesses for more than 15 years, with 500+ clients and 1,000+ projects. Our Google Ads management is adjusted weekly, with reporting on cost per lead, and the account stays in your name.
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Common causes are irrelevant search terms, ads sent to a page that does not match the search, a slow or hard-to-use mobile page, and broken call or form tracking.
Check status columns for disapprovals or limits, billing, budget, bid strategy targets and targeting settings. Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool instead of searching for your own ad.
Give a new campaign at least a month with weekly adjustments. After a major change, allow a week or two of fresh data.
Only if conversion tracking is accurate and you have steady conversion volume. Smart Bidding optimizes toward your tracked conversions, so bad tracking makes it worse.
Yes. Slow pages, broken forms and pages that do not match the ad lose most paid visitors, even when the ads themselves are well targeted.
