If you’re running Google Ads yourself, there’s a good chance your campaigns are spending money in places they shouldn’t.
We’ve audited plenty of Google Ads accounts over the years, and it’s surprising how often we find the same settings hurting performance. They’re easy to miss, especially since Google enables many of them by default.
The good news is that fixing them only takes a few minutes.
Here are four settings we recommend checking in almost every Google Ads account.
1. Change Location Targeting from “Presence or Interest” to “Presence”
This is one of the biggest settings we change when taking over a new account.
By default, Google targets People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations.
That last group, people who have simply shown interest in your target location, is where wasted spend often happens.
That sounds harmless until you realize someone outside your service area can still see your ads simply because they’ve searched for your city.
Imagine you’re a roofer in a major city in your province or state.
Someone living three hours away who has been searching for a roofer could still be eligible to see your ads, even though they’re never going to become a customer.
If you’re running ads for any business with a defined service area, paying for clicks from someone hours away doesn’t help your business.
Changing the setting to Presence tells Google to only show your ads to people who are actually located in or regularly in your service area.
For most local businesses, this is the better option and can significantly reduce wasted ad spend.
2. Turn Off Google Search Partners
Google Search Partners allows your ads to appear on other partner search engines and partner websites outside of Google Search.
While they can occasionally generate conversions, we’ve found they often bring lower quality traffic than Google Search itself.
If your goal is generating qualified leads rather than simply getting more clicks, Search Partners usually aren’t worth the extra spend.
For most businesses, we’d rather invest every dollar into Google Search where purchase intent is strongest.
3. Turn Off the Google Display Network on Search Campaigns
This one catches a lot of business owners off guard.
When this option is enabled, Google can use any leftover Search budget to show your ads across the Display Network.
That means your Search ads can begin appearing on websites, blogs and apps instead of only appearing when someone is actively searching for your services.
Search campaigns work because they target people who are already looking for what you offer.
Display advertising is an entirely different strategy with different goals.
Keeping Search campaigns focused on Search produces stronger lead quality and better control over your budget.
Someone actively searching for your service has far more intent than someone casually browsing a website.
Keeping Display disabled ensures your search budget stays focused on people actively looking for your products or services.
4. Stop Using Maximize Clicks as Your Bidding Strategy
One of the most common bidding strategies we see in underperforming accounts is Maximize Clicks.
The goal of Maximize Clicks is exactly as the name suggests. It tries to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
The problem is that clicks don’t pay the bills.
New Leads or Sales do.
Google often achieves lower-cost clicks by finding users who are less likely to convert. You end up with plenty of website visitors but very few inquiries or sales.
If lead generation or sales is your objective, you’re generally better off using a bidding strategy that optimizes for conversions, such as Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value, or starting with Manual CPC while collecting conversion data.
The goal here is to focus on getting better customers, not simply more clicks.
Conclusion:
Small settings can have a surprisingly large impact on campaign performance.
These four settings are some of the first things we review whenever we audit a Google Ads account.
Small changes like these can improve lead quality, reduce wasted spend, and help make every advertising dollar work harder without increasing how much you spend each month.
If you’re running Google Ads yourself, it’s worth taking a few minutes to review these settings today.
Want another set of eyes on your account?
Managing Google Ads takes time, and even small changes can have a big impact on performance.
If you’d rather spend your time getting back to what you do best, running your business, we’d be happy to help.
Reach out today for a Google Ads audit to let our team identify opportunities to improve performance, reduce wasted spend, and generate more qualified leads.
