5 Ways You’re Wasting Money in Google Ads (And How to Fix Them)

Intro

Google Ads is an incredibly powerful platform to connect with your ideal audience exactly when they need you most. With a wide range of targeting and customization options, it’s no wonder marketers love it. But even experienced advertisers can fall into traps that quietly drain their budgets without delivering meaningful results.

Today, we’re going to spotlight the hidden "budget leaks" I see most often in Google Ads accounts—and how you can patch them to maximize your returns.

1. Accidentally Running Search on “Network” and “Partner” sites

When you set up a new Search campaign in Google Ads, Google sneakily checks the box to opt you into their Display Network (GDN) and their Search “partner” Network by default.

The problem? These networks behave very differently. While Search targets users actively looking for something, Display often shows your ads to passive browsers, resulting in lower-quality traffic and poorer ROI—especially when Display is tacked onto a Search campaign. Similarly, their Search “partner” Network that includes lower quality sites such as Dogpile.com, BizRate.com and Ask.com that can produce poorer results.

**How to fix this: **Uncheck the boxes for “Search Network” and “Display Network” if your goal is to run on Google search. For testing purposes, you can set up a separate campaign that opts-in to these

2. Accepting Google’s Auto-Recommendations

We strongly recommend hiding and ignoring Google’s automatically applied recommendations. While these suggestions may seem helpful, they often make changes that significantly broaden your reach and your ad spend and can often conflict with your budget optimization goals.

We strongly recommend disabling this feature, as it tends to waste budget more often than it improves performance.

How to fix this: Go to “Recommendations” and then select “Dismiss” for each one. Note: Google will continue to show these for you and it’s very easily to accidentally apply them to your campaigns so use caution.

3. Mistakenly using “Presence or Interest” location targeting

You may have noticed that Google is often running your ads outside locations you selected. This is likely because Google sets your default location settings to “Presence or Interest” option. This allows Google to serve your ads to a wide range of people in that live in other areas you may not wish to target, such as those that are traveling to your location, have done a basic search for an item in that area or have distant family that lives there. Google doesn’t specify all the reasons but your ads will show in a lot of unintended places.

Choosing the tighter “Presence-only” option ensures your ads are only displayed to users who are physically located in your specified regions, helping you avoid wasting budget on irrelevant audiences.

**How to fix this: **Go to “Locations” in your campaign settings and then select “Location options.” Be sure to select the bottom option: “Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations.” \

4. Avoiding “Click Fraud”

A major source of wasted spend hides in clicks from bots, competitors, accidental clicks and other “invalid” click activity.

According to Juniper Research, it’s estimated that 22% of all online ad spend is due to fraud and invalid click activity.

You can view the amount of “invalid” clicks in your Google Ads campaigns This can be viewed low-activity keywords that fly under the radar. Small daily spends add up over weeks and months without generating conversions.

**How to fix this: **Periodically review the amount of invalid clicks your campaign receives by going to your campaign reports and adding the column for “Invalid Clicks” and then adjusting your keywords, site exclusions and other targeting to reduce your exposure to spammy websites and users. You can also incorporate click fraud prevention tools to help mitigate the issue.

5. Not Using Negative Keywords

As Google’s keyword match types have become broader and fuzzier, negative keywords are more important than ever to maintain targeting precision.

Without negatives, your ads might show up for irrelevant or low-quality queries—burning through your budget.

**How to fix this: **Regularly review your “Search Terms Report” (under “Insights and Reporting” → Search Terms). Consider using negative keyword lists that are available online.

Final Thoughts

Wasting your money can be very easy in Google Ads. This is accelerated by the default settings and constant auto-recommendations by Google to broaden your reach and increase your ad spend. Savvy marketers know to do the opposite: starting with a very narrow target and expanding based on what’s working.

By catching these silent budget leaks early, you’ll stretch your ad spend much further and see significantly better returns.