Why am I getting junk leads from Google Ads?
Short answer
Usually because the account is paying for the wrong searches, the wrong places or the wrong hours. The common causes are loose keyword matching, missing negative keywords, location settings that include people who are only interested in your area, and ads that run when nobody answers the phone. Each can be found in the account's own reports.
When Google Ads send you junk leads, the account is usually paying for the wrong searches, the wrong places or the wrong hours. The kind of junk you get points to the cause, so the first step is to sort a few weeks of bad leads into types before changing anything.
Match the junk to its cause
| What the lead looks like | Likely cause | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Wants a service you don’t offer, a job, a part, or do-it-yourself advice | Loose keyword matching and missing negative keywords | The search terms report |
| Real customer, but in a city you don’t serve | Location settings | Where your ads showed, compared with where you targeted |
| Voicemails with no message, or callbacks that go nowhere | Ads running when nobody answers | Call times against office hours |
| Sales pitches and nonsense form entries | An unprotected form, or bidding that was taught to chase them | What the account counts as a conversion |
Wrong searches: loose matching and missing negative keywords
This is the most common cause. A keyword in Google Ads isn’t an exact instruction. Google shows your ad on searches it judges to be related to the keyword, and the looser the matching, the more freedom it has. A hypothetical electrician in Escondido bidding on “electrician” can end up paying for “electrician apprenticeship”, “electrician salary” and the name of a competitor.
The search terms report lists what people typed before they clicked. Reading it’s the cure. Anything that doesn’t belong gets added as a negative keyword, a word or phrase that stops the ad from showing. An account with no negative keywords has very likely been paying for searches like these. Tighter matching and a maintained negative list are the core of managing search ads.
Wrong places and wrong hours
A campaign can be set to reach people who are in your area, or also people who only showed interest in it. The second group produces callers who can’t be served, which is how ads end up showing in cities you don’t serve. Check the campaign’s location options to see which applies.
Search campaigns can also be set to appear on websites beyond Google’s own results page. Those placements tend to behave differently from a search by a homeowner with a leak, so it’s worth knowing whether yours are switched on.
Hours cost as much as places. A click at nine at night that reaches voicemail is paid for in full, and how fast the call is answered decides the rest. The homeowner usually calls the next company, and by morning your callback goes to someone who is already booked. From the office it looks like a junk lead, when it was a good lead that nobody answered. Ads can be scheduled by day and hour, so the choice is to answer during those hours or stop buying them.
Bidding that learned the wrong lesson
Automated bidding looks for more of whatever the account records as a conversion. If every call of any length and every form entry counts, then sales calls and spam count as wins, and the system finds more of them. The fix is to count only qualified leads, which needs call tracking and someone marking the calls. A simple spam check on the form helps too.
What can’t be removed
Some junk will always get through. People misdial and suppliers click ads. Existing customers click an ad to find your number. There’s also a trade-off: the tighter the account, the fewer total leads it brings. The aim is a level of waste you can see and accept, with the cost of a booked job as the measure. If the junk never falls below a level you can live with for a given service, that service may not be worth advertising.