What We Learned from Auditing 100+ Google Ads Accounts (And How to Fix Yours)

Google Wants Your Money – We Want You to Keep It

If you’ve ever felt like running Google Ads is like throwing money into a black hole, you’re not wrong. We’ve audited over 100 Google Ads accounts for small and medium businesses, and let’s just say – it wasn’t pretty. Time and time again, we saw businesses bleeding cash thanks to Google’s so – called “helpful” automation, AI-driven nonsense, and an outsourced support team that couldn’t sell water in a desert.

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be this way.

Google Ads can be a powerhouse for lead generation – if you know what you’re doing. The problem? Google doesn’t want you to know what you’re doing. They want you to trust their AI, accept their “recommendations,” and blindly increase your budget while wondering why conversions aren’t rolling in. That’s where we come in. We’re pulling back the curtain on the biggest mistakes we see over and over – and how you can fight back.

Google’s Money Pit: Where Your Budget Goes to Die

Picture this: You’re a small business owner. You set up a Google Ads campaign, trusting the platform to steer you in the right direction. You follow Google’s recommendations – use broad match keywords, enable Smart Bidding, and let AI handle everything.

Fast forward a few months, and what do you have? A sky-high ad spend, a flood of useless traffic, and zero new customers. Sound familiar?

🔍 Real – World Example: We recently audited a plumbing company’s Google Ads account. They were spending $7,000 a month on clicks, yet 40% of their budget was going to searches like “how to become a plumber” and “plumbing jobs near me.” Broad match keywords, no negative keyword list, and Smart Bidding had turned their campaign into a donation fund for Google.

How Google Tricks You into Spending More

Google’s AI doesn’t know your business. It doesn’t care whether a click turns into a customer. It cares about one thing: making Google more money.

Ever noticed how Google keeps nudging you to “improve” your campaign with their Recommendations tab? Yeah – reject them all.

This isn’t just a guess – it’s economics 101. Publicly owned companies like Google have a fiduciary duty to maximise profits for their shareholders. Their primary obligation isn’t to advertisers like you – it’s to Wall Street. They aren’t here to make your marketing more effective; they’re here to extract as much money from you as possible while keeping investors happy.

🔍 Psychology of Business: Studies in behavioural economics show that humans tend to trust automated systems, even when they produce poor results (Source: Harvard Business Review). Google exploits this by making you feel like their AI “knows best,” when in reality, it’s just optimising for their bottom line.

👉 What You Should Do Instead:

1. Go into your Google Ads dashboard, click on ‘Keywords,’ and remove all broad match terms.
2. Switch to phrase and exact match only.
3. Create a negative keyword list – add at least 50 irrelevant terms immediately.

AI-Written Ads: A Disaster in the Making

Google loves pushing their AI – powered Responsive Search Ads (RSA), promising better results with machine-generated copy. But have you ever actually read some of these AI-generated ads? They’re soulless, robotic, and sometimes straight-up nonsensical.

🔍 Case Study: One of our clients, an eCommerce brand, switched from manually written ads to Google’s AI-generated Responsive Search Ads. Within two months, their conversion rate dropped 35%. Why? Because the AI was randomly mixing headlines and descriptions, creating garbage like “Best Price | Buy Now | Fast Shipping | High Quality Product” with no consistency or messaging.

🔍 The Science Behind It: Neuroscience research confirms that humans connect with emotion-driven messaging, not algorithmically generated text (Source: Journal of Consumer Psychology). AI lacks the ability to create persuasive narratives that resonate with actual human emotions.

👉 What You Should Do Instead:

1. Write all your ad copy manually – do not rely on AI – generated ads.
2. Test at least two different ad variations per campaign.
3. Include strong emotional triggers in your messaging.

Google’s Support Team: The Worst Advice You’ll Ever Get

If you’ve ever taken a call from a Google Ads “specialist,” you know where this is going.

Their only job is to get you to spend more money. That’s it. They don’t care about your profitability, your conversion rate, or your business goals. Their advice?

• “Try Smart Bidding.”
• “Increase your budget.”
• “Enable all recommendations.”
• “Trust the AI.”

🚨 True Story: One of our clients took a call with a Google Ads rep who advised them to increase their budget by 60% to “improve performance.” No mention of fixing keyword targeting, optimising landing pages, or refining ad copy. Just – spend more.

🔍 The Bigger Picture: Publicly traded companies are legally required to prioritise shareholder profits. If you ever wondered why Google Ads keeps recommending things that increase spend but don’t improve conversions, now you know – it’s not incompetence, it’s by design (Source: Investopedia).

👉 What You Should Do Instead:

1. Hang up on Google’s support team – seriously, ignore them.
2. Review your Google Ads settings weekly to prevent auto – applied changes.
3. Invest in learning PPC strategies or work with an expert who actually understands business growth.

Final Thoughts: Take Back Control of Your Ads

Google Ads is not a set-it-and-forget-it platform. If you let Google take the wheel, you’ll end up with an empty wallet and a whole lot of regret.

Here’s the reality:

• Google wants you to spend more, not get better results.
• AI – generated ads and landing pages are useless.
• Google’s support team will never give you advice that saves you money.
• The Recommendations tab exists to help Google, not you.

But you’re not powerless. With the right strategy, you can make Google Ads work for you – without playing into Google’s money-making schemes.

👉 Want a real Google Ads audit from experts who actually care about your results? Click Click Media can help. Let’s chat. Contact us today!