How to Fix Google Ads Not Converting: A 6-Step Diagnostic and Repair Guide

You’re spending money on Google Ads, clicks are coming in, but your phone isn’t ringing and your inbox stays empty. Sound familiar? When Google Ads stop converting, it’s not just frustrating—it’s bleeding your marketing budget dry with nothing to show for it.

The good news: conversion problems are almost always fixable once you know where to look.

This step-by-step guide walks you through the exact diagnostic process we use at Clicks Geek to turn underperforming campaigns into lead-generating machines. You’ll learn how to identify the specific breakdown point in your funnel, fix the issues systematically, and start seeing real results from your ad spend.

Whether your conversions have dropped suddenly or you’ve never seen the results you expected, these six steps will help you pinpoint the problem and implement solutions that actually work. Let’s get started.

Step 1: Audit Your Conversion Tracking Setup

Before you change anything else, you need to know if your conversion tracking actually works. Think of it like checking if your cash register is recording sales—if the tracking is broken, you’re flying blind.

Start by logging into your Google Ads account and navigating to Tools & Settings, then Conversions. Look at each conversion action you’ve set up. Check the “Last received” column—if it shows “Never” or hasn’t recorded anything in weeks, you’ve found your problem.

Click into each conversion action and verify the settings. The conversion window should match your typical sales cycle. For most local businesses, 30 days is appropriate. Check that the counting method is set correctly—”One” for lead forms (you only want to count each submission once), or “Every” for e-commerce transactions.

Now comes the critical test: actually submit a conversion yourself.

Open your website in an incognito browser window, click through one of your ads, and complete the action you’re tracking—fill out the contact form, make a phone call, whatever you’ve designated as a conversion. Wait a few hours, then check if it appeared in your Google Ads account under Recent Conversions.

If it didn’t show up, you have a tracking problem. Install Google Tag Assistant (a free Chrome extension) and run it while you submit another test conversion. It will tell you exactly which tags fired and which didn’t.

Common tracking failures we see constantly: duplicate conversion tags that cancel each other out, thank-you pages that redirect too quickly for the tag to fire, form submissions that don’t trigger the conversion event, and tags that only work on desktop but fail on mobile devices.

If you’re using Google Tag Manager, open it and check your conversion trigger conditions. The trigger should fire on the specific event that indicates a conversion—form submission confirmation, thank-you page load, or click on your phone number. Test it using GTM’s Preview mode to watch tags fire in real-time.

Fix any tracking issues before moving to Step 2. Without accurate data, every other optimization is guesswork.

Step 2: Analyze Your Search Terms for Intent Mismatch

Your ads might be showing to people who have zero intention of buying. They’re clicking because they want free information, not because they’re ready to hire someone or make a purchase.

Pull your Search Terms Report by going to Keywords, then Search Terms. Set the date range to the last 30 days and sort by clicks. Look at what people actually typed before clicking your ads.

You’re looking for informational queries that waste your budget. These typically include words like “how to,” “DIY,” “tutorial,” “free,” “tips,” “guide,” “what is,” or “definition.” Someone searching “how to fix leaky faucet myself” is not going to hire your plumbing company—they’re trying to avoid hiring anyone.

Create a spreadsheet and categorize your search terms into three buckets: high intent (ready to buy or hire), medium intent (researching options), and low intent (just learning or DIY). Be brutally honest about which bucket each term belongs in.

Now add negative keywords aggressively. Every low-intent term should become a negative keyword. If you’re a roofing company and people are searching “roof repair cost estimator” or “DIY roof patch,” add those as negatives immediately. They’re never going to convert. For a deeper dive into this process, check out our guide on how to find and create negative keyword lists in Google Ads.

Look at your match types next. If you’re running broad match keywords without sufficient negative keyword coverage, you’re probably attracting a ton of irrelevant traffic. Broad match can work well for businesses with strong conversion tracking and large budgets, but most local businesses need tighter control.

Shift your budget toward phrase match and exact match keywords that capture commercial intent. Someone searching “emergency plumber near me” or “roofing contractor [your city]” has clear buying intent. Someone searching “plumbing basics” or “roof types” does not.

Review this report weekly. Search behavior changes, and new irrelevant terms will constantly appear. The businesses that convert best from Google Ads are obsessive about negative keywords—they typically have hundreds or thousands of them.

One pattern to watch for: if you’re getting lots of clicks but zero conversions from mobile devices, check your mobile search terms separately. Mobile users often have different intent than desktop users, and you may need device-specific negative keywords.

Step 3: Evaluate Landing Page Alignment and Speed

Your ad promises one thing, but does your landing page deliver on that promise? Message mismatch kills conversions faster than almost anything else.

Click through your own ads and look at the landing page with fresh eyes. Does the headline match what the ad said? If your ad promotes “24/7 Emergency Plumbing,” but your landing page headline says “Quality Plumbing Services Since 1995,” you’ve created confusion. The visitor has to work to figure out if they’re in the right place.

The headline on your landing page should echo the core promise from your ad. If someone clicked an ad about emergency service, the landing page should immediately confirm they can get emergency service. Make it obvious they’re in the right place.

Now test your page speed. Open PageSpeed Insights and enter your landing page URL. Check both mobile and desktop scores. Mobile is critical—most local searches happen on phones, and if your page takes more than three seconds to load, you’re losing conversions before people even see your content.

Common speed killers: oversized images, too many scripts, unoptimized code, and slow hosting. If your score is below 70 on mobile, speed is definitely hurting your conversions. Work with your web developer to optimize images, enable compression, and reduce unnecessary code.

Check your form on multiple devices and browsers. Pull out your phone right now and try to fill out your contact form. Is it easy to use? Do the fields work properly? Can you actually submit it? We’ve seen countless campaigns fail because the form didn’t work on iPhones or Android devices.

Look at your call-to-action. Is it immediately visible when the page loads, or do visitors have to scroll to find it? The primary action you want people to take should be above the fold and impossible to miss. Use a contrasting color for your CTA button and make the text specific: “Get Your Free Quote” converts better than generic “Submit” buttons.

Remove distractions. Every link, image, or piece of content that doesn’t support the conversion goal is a potential exit point. Your landing page should have one clear path: fill out the form or call this number. Navigation menus, blog post links, and social media icons give people reasons to leave instead of convert. This is one of the most common issues we cover in our guide to fixing ads not converting to sales.

Step 4: Review Your Audience Targeting and Bid Strategy

You might be showing ads to the wrong people or in the wrong places. Geographic targeting errors alone can destroy campaign performance for local businesses.

Check your location settings first. Go to Settings, then Locations. Are you targeting your actual service area? We’ve seen campaigns targeting entire states when the business only serves three counties, or targeting “people interested in your location” instead of “people in your location.”

For most local businesses, you want “Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations.” The “Presence or interest” option shows your ads to anyone searching for your location from anywhere in the world—completely wasted spend for a local service business.

Review your location report to see where your clicks and conversions actually come from. You might discover you’re getting tons of clicks from areas you don’t serve. Exclude those locations immediately.

Look at device performance next. Go to the Devices report and check conversion rates by device type. If mobile gets 70% of your clicks but only 10% of your conversions, you have a mobile problem—probably page speed or form usability issues from Step 3. You can adjust bids down for underperforming devices while you fix the underlying issues.

Check your audience segments if you’re using them. Observation mode is usually better than targeting mode for most local businesses—it lets you see how different audiences perform without restricting who can see your ads. Review the data and consider excluding audience segments that consistently fail to convert.

Examine your bid strategy. If you’re using Target CPA or Maximize Conversions, do you have enough conversion data for the algorithm to work? Google recommends at least 15-30 conversions per month for automated strategies to optimize effectively. Below that threshold, you’re better off with Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks while you build up data. Our Google Ads optimization guide covers bid strategy selection in detail.

Check if you’ve accidentally set bid adjustments that conflict with your automated strategy. Automated bidding works best when you let the algorithm control the bids without manual interference.

Step 5: Strengthen Ad Copy and Extensions

Your ads need to do two things: attract the right people and repel the wrong ones. Generic ad copy attracts everyone and converts no one.

Look at your headlines. Do they communicate specific benefits, or do they just describe what you do? “Expert Plumbers in Dallas” is descriptive but boring. “Fix Your Plumbing Emergency in 60 Minutes” tells people exactly what benefit they’ll get and creates urgency.

Include your differentiators in your headlines and descriptions. What makes you different from the ten other businesses advertising for the same keywords? Maybe you offer same-day service, have 20 years of experience, provide free estimates, or guarantee your work. Put those trust signals front and center.

Add specific numbers when possible. “Over 500 Happy Customers” or “Licensed & Insured Since 2004” builds credibility. “24/7 Emergency Service” tells people you’re available when they need you. “Free Estimates” removes a barrier to contact.

Check your ad extensions. You should be using every relevant extension type: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call extensions, and location extensions. Extensions make your ads larger and more prominent, pushing competitors down the page.

Your sitelinks should point to specific, relevant pages—not just your homepage. “Emergency Services,” “Service Areas,” “Customer Reviews,” and “Get a Quote” are all valuable sitelinks that give people quick access to the information they need to make a decision.

Use callout extensions to highlight additional benefits: “Free Estimates,” “Licensed & Insured,” “Same-Day Service,” “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” These short phrases build trust and differentiate you from competitors.

If you’re running responsive search ads, make sure you’re providing enough headline and description variations. Google needs at least 8-10 headlines and 3-4 descriptions to effectively test combinations. Include your target keywords in some headlines, benefits in others, and trust signals in the rest.

Review your ad strength score. Google provides this in the ad creation interface. Aim for “Excellent” by adding more assets and ensuring your headlines and descriptions are sufficiently different from each other.

Step 6: Implement a Testing and Monitoring System

The businesses that win with Google Ads don’t set campaigns and forget them. They test constantly and monitor performance obsessively.

Set up a weekly review schedule. Every Monday morning, check your key metrics: impressions, clicks, conversions, cost per conversion, and conversion rate. Look for sudden changes that might indicate problems—a spike in clicks with no conversions could mean your tracking broke or your landing page went down.

Create a simple spreadsheet to track performance week over week. Document every change you make—new negative keywords, bid adjustments, ad copy tests, landing page updates. When performance improves or declines, you’ll know exactly what caused it.

Set up automated rules in Google Ads to pause underperforming keywords or ads. For example, you might create a rule that pauses any keyword that spends $200 without generating a conversion. This prevents runaway waste while you’re not actively monitoring.

Start A/B testing systematically. Test one element at a time so you know what actually moved the needle. This month, test two different landing page headlines. Next month, test different CTA button colors. The month after that, test ad copy variations.

Use Google Ads’ built-in experiments feature to run controlled tests. You can split traffic between two landing pages or bid strategies and see which performs better with statistical confidence.

Establish conversion benchmarks based on your industry and market. What’s a realistic cost per lead for your business? What conversion rate should you expect from your landing page? Without benchmarks, you can’t tell if your performance is good or bad. Use our Google Ads budget calculator to set realistic expectations for your spend.

Set up conversion alerts in Google Analytics or your CRM. If conversions drop by more than 30% in a single day, you want to know immediately—not a week later when you check your dashboard. Quick detection means quick fixes.

Keep a testing roadmap. List out all the things you want to test over the next three months: new ad copy angles, different landing page layouts, additional keyword themes, audience targeting options. Work through this list systematically rather than making random changes.

Your Action Plan for Converting Campaigns

Before you spend another dollar on Google Ads, work through this quick diagnostic checklist. Verify your conversion tracking fires correctly by submitting a test conversion yourself. Pull your search terms report and ruthlessly add negative keywords for any informational or DIY queries. Check your landing page loads in under three seconds on mobile and has a clear call-to-action above the fold.

Review your targeting settings to confirm you’re only showing ads in your service area. Examine device performance and adjust bids for underperforming devices. Strengthen your ad copy with specific benefits and trust signals, and make sure you’re using all relevant ad extensions.

Set up a weekly monitoring cadence and document every change you make. Start testing one element at a time to identify what actually improves performance.

Most conversion problems stem from one or two fixable issues—not a complete campaign overhaul. Start with Step 1 and work through systematically. You’ll likely identify the bottleneck within the first three steps.

If you’ve completed these steps and still aren’t seeing results, the problem may require deeper strategic changes—wrong keywords, wrong targeting, wrong offer, or a fundamental market positioning issue. Sometimes you’re advertising the right service to the wrong audience, or the right audience at the wrong time in their buying journey. If you’re struggling with poor quality leads from marketing, the issue may be in your qualification process rather than your ads.

The reality: Google Ads can be incredibly profitable for local businesses when set up correctly. But there’s no room for guesswork when you’re spending real money. Every click costs something, and every wasted click adds up fast. If you’re wondering whether Google Ads is even the right channel, our comparison of Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for lead generation can help you decide.

Ready to stop guessing and start converting? Clicks Geek specializes in turning underperforming Google Ads into predictable lead generation systems for local businesses. We don’t just drive traffic—we build campaigns that deliver qualified leads and measurable revenue growth. Learn more about Google Ads management pricing to understand what professional help actually costs.

Tired of spending money on marketing that doesn’t produce real revenue? We build lead systems that turn traffic into qualified leads and measurable sales growth. If you want to see what this would look like for your business, we’ll walk you through how it works and break down what’s realistic in your market.