Google showed your ads to the wrong people today.

Google showed your some of your adverts to the wrong people today. You (or someone you hire) must deal with this or your ads are going to start costing more and generating fewer leads.

The wrong people seeing your ad is a problem whether they click your ad or not:

• If they click the ad you've wasted money. On a tight budget that could mean missing out on a future customer.
• If they don't click on your ad it's still a problem. Google uses the click through rate (how often your ads are clicked) as part of their formula for working out how good your ads are. Good ads get shown more and charged less per click. It's a virtuous circle. Ads that don't get clicked as often start start circling the drain.

Google isn't being malicious when they show your ads to the wrong people.

It happens because people don't always use the same words to search for what you sell. 15% of the trillion search phrases that people type into Google every year have never been seen before.

Put another way, 1 in 7 searches typed into Google has never been typed in before.

Google shows your ads for some of those new searches. Most of the time they get it right. Sometimes they don't so they provide a way for you to stop your ads showing in response to some searches.

I've written about this before but I still see this problem in almost every AdWords account I consult on. I got this from a South African client last time I wrote about this.

"We paid Google a fortune for rubbish clicks … people wanting gate opening times, camping and all sorts of nonsense costing us R12 or so per click. It looks like we have wasted R200k!"

It's a silent creeping problem. It took him about a year to waste that money.

Your AdWords campaign doesn't stop dead and it doesn't blow the budget right away. It's a bit like the rust under the carpet of my first car. I didn't even know it was there till my girlfriend put her foot through the floor like Mrs Flintstone.

Dealing with this once a month is right for the kinds of campaigns I manage. You might need to do it more often or get away with doing it less frequently.

I find Google's interface is uncomfortable for this workflow so I built a tool to streamline the work. It doesn't demand a PhD in AdWords and takes only a few minutes per campaign if done regularly.

You're welcome to use the tool for your campaigns.

Related articles

What is Google actually learning from?

Browser-based conversion tracking tells Google what the browser saw. Offline conversions can tell Google what actually happened in the business. As Google increasingly learns from conversion signals, I think that distinction matters.

Contact method as a lead quality signal

Different ways of contacting your business often attract different types of prospects. Here's how to measure it and use it to improve lead quality.

Offline conversion tracking with Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular form plugins for WordPress. But, if you're running Google Ads, there is a problem. Contact Form 7 can tell you that somebody submitted a form. It can't tell Google Ads if that person became a customer.

The book I couldn't write today

What happens when an engineer applies failure investigation thinking to Google Ads and tries to eliminate the black boxes?

Why good Google Ads campaigns still lose clients

One of the most disheartening parts of managing Google Ads is that you can do a great job and still lose the client. The ads, and by extension the person managing the ads, always gets the blame for poor performance.

The Google Ads WhatsApp conversion tracking guide

Optimising your Google Ads campaigns for a click on a WhatsApp button on your website is a waste of money. You can't sell to a click. That's why I built Convertista to track WhatsApp leads and sales as Google Ads conversions. Since building it I've spoken with hundreds of business owners and PPC professionals about conversion tracking. The same questions keep coming up. I put the answers in this guide.

Topics you'll find on this site

Agency insights

Thoughts, lessons and practical advice for Google Ads agencies, freelancers and consultants. Subjects include finding and managing clients, building tools, business strategy and staying relevant.

Conversion tracking

Understand what happens after someone clicks your advert. Subjects include offline conversions, CRM integration, attribution, auditability and marketing instrumentation.

Essays and thinking

Articles about marketing, engineering, AI and problem solving that don't fit neatly into the other topics. These are some of the ideas and experiences that have shaped how I think.

Google Ads for lead generation

Learn how to use Google Ads to generate profitable leads. Subjects include campaign strategy, bidding, targeting, optimisation and the challenges of running lead generation campaigns.

Landing pages

Things I've learned about high-converting landing pages. Subjects include copywriting, page structure, forms, trust, conversion rate optimisation and user experience.

Lead quality

Practical advice on attracting better enquiries and understanding why lead quality varies. Subjects include diagnosing poor leads, qualification, filtering junk leads and improving the feedback you send to Google Ads.

Sales Process

What happens after a lead has been generated determines if Google Ads is profitable. Subjects include first contact, follow-up, quoting, lead nurturing and turning more enquiries into customers.