Signs Your Google Ads Agency Is Wasting Money
How to spot wasted Google Ads spend in an ecommerce account, even if you are not a specialist, and what to ask your agency about each sign.
Your Google Ads agency is probably wasting money if you cannot see your search terms, if branded search is mixed into every number, if conversions in Google Ads do not match orders in your store, or if the same products get budget month after month whether they sell or not. You do not need to be a specialist to check these. Each sign below comes with what to look for and what to ask.
None of these on its own proves an agency is bad. Accounts drift, and every account has some waste. What matters is whether your agency finds it before you do.
Sign one: you never see search terms
Search terms are the actual words people typed before they clicked your ad. They are the clearest view of where your money goes. In a healthy account, someone reads them every week and adds negative keywords to stop spend on searches that will never buy.
What to look for: Ask for a search terms report for the last month. Look for searches that have nothing to do with what you sell, searches for free things, jobs, how-to guides, or competitor products you do not stock.
What to ask: “How often do you review search terms, and what did you exclude last week?” A good agency can answer in seconds.
Performance Max shows less search detail than Search campaigns. That is not a reason to look at none. Ask what your agency does to check where Performance Max spends. Our guide on Performance Max vs Search for ecommerce covers this.
Sign two: branded search is hiding in the totals
People who search your brand name are often already on their way to buy. Ads on those searches are cheap and convert well, so they make an account’s numbers look great. If branded search sits inside the same campaigns as everything else, a weak account can look strong.
What to look for: Ask your agency to split cost and tracked revenue into brand and non-brand. If most of the revenue is brand, your agency may not be finding many new customers.
What to ask: “How much of our tracked revenue comes from people searching our name?” Then, “What are you doing to grow the rest?”
Sign three: Google’s numbers do not match your store
Google Ads reports conversions and conversion value. Your store reports orders and revenue. They will never match exactly, because Google credits sales to ads in its own way. But they should move together, and the gap should be explainable.
What to look for: Compare Google Ads purchases for last month with your store’s orders from paid search. If Google shows far more, you may have duplicate tags, or soft actions counted as purchases. If it shows far fewer, tracking may be broken.
What to ask: “When did you last check our tracking against our store’s orders, and what did you find?” Read how to read a Google Ads report for what each column means.
Sign four: everything counts as a conversion
Some accounts count add-to-cart, page views, sign-ups and purchases all as conversions. Smart bidding then optimizes toward whatever is easiest to get, which is rarely a sale.
What to look for: In Google Ads, open the conversions list under Goals. Check which actions are marked as primary. For most stores, only purchases should be.
What to ask: “Which conversion actions steer bidding, and why?”
Sign five: the same products always get the budget
In Shopping and Performance Max, Google spends where it expects results. Left alone, it often pours budget into a few products and ignores the rest, or keeps spending on products with poor margin.
What to look for: Ask for a product report: cost and tracked revenue by product. Look for products with high spend and little revenue, and good products with almost no spend.
What to ask: “How are our products grouped, and how do you decide what gets budget?” A good answer mentions margin, stock and custom labels in the feed. See Google Ads for ecommerce for how we approach it.
Sign six: the feed has not been touched
The product feed is what Google reads to decide when to show your products. Weak titles, missing product types and disapproved items quietly cut your reach.
What to look for: In Merchant Center, check for disapproved or limited products. Read a few titles. Do they lead with what people search for, or with your internal names?
What to ask: “What have you changed in our feed recently?”
Sign seven: reports with no decisions
A report full of charts that never says what changed, why, and what happens next is a sign the account is being watched, not managed.
What to look for: Read your last three reports. Can you list the changes your agency made?
What to ask: “What did you change this month, and what did it do?”
Sign eight: budget goes up, nothing else changes
When results flatten, the easiest move is more budget. Sometimes it is the right move. Often it just buys more of the same clicks at higher cost.
What to ask: “Before we add budget, what would you fix?” A good agency usually has a list.
Sign nine: you cannot get into your own account
If you do not have admin access to your own Google Ads account, Merchant Center and analytics, fix that first. You cannot judge what you cannot see.
What to do if you see several of these
Do not panic, and do not fire anyone on the spot. Ask the questions above in writing and see how your agency answers. Good agencies welcome the questions. If the answers are vague, get a second opinion.
That is what our free Google Ads audit is for. Nathan Synoground’s team checks tracking, search terms, structure, feed and budget, and tells you in plain words what we would change first. Nathan has managed $20.5M in Google Ads across 150 client accounts since 2018. If you decide to move, read how to switch agencies without losing your data. And for a view of other agencies worth a call, see our ranking.