Stop paying Google for the wrong clicks

• Google’s defaults leak budget — Search partners and auto-expansion are the usual culprits.
• A 10-minute audit finds most of the waste in any small-business account.
• Performance Max needs an account-wide negative list and proper asset group structure to behave.
• On a real account, we cut $1,650/mo of waste and leads went UP 22% the next month.

Roughly once a quarter we audit a new client’s Google Ads account. Roughly once a quarter, we find at least a third of their spend going to clicks that will never convert. It’s not because their previous agency was lazy. It’s because Google’s defaults are designed for Google’s revenue, not yours.

The thing nobody checks

Search partners. Display network expansion. Broad match. Performance Max’s "Final URL expansion". These are boxes that come ticked by default, and every single one of them spreads your budget into surfaces that rarely convert for a service business.

In the tradie account we looked at, "Search partners" — not Google itself, but third-party search sites bundled in — was 14% of spend at roughly one-tenth the conversion rate. That’s an instant $1,200/mo saved just by unticking one box.

The 10-minute audit

Any Google Ads login. Any account. Here’s the exact sequence:

1. Open Campaigns → any Search campaign → Settings → Networks. Untick "Include Google search partners".
2. Same panel — untick "Display network". This is not where service-business leads come from.
3. Check Locations. "Presence or interest" is the default — switch to "Presence" only unless you explicitly want people who are just thinking about your area.
4. Keywords. Sort by cost, descending. Any term at 0 conversions and $200+ spent in the last 30 days? Pause it.
5. Search terms. Filter by the broadest of your keywords — you will find 30–50% junk to add as negatives.
6. Conversions column. Go to Tools → Conversions and look at how many are marked "Primary" vs "Secondary". Most accounts have too many Primaries, which teaches Google to bid on noisy signals.

The leak points, in a table

Performance Max is harder

PMax hides almost everything. You can’t see which placements your money goes to. You can’t see the search terms (mostly). You can only see the shape of the spend, not the content.

The only levers that work:

• A good negative keyword list applied account-wide (you need Google support to enable this for PMax in some accounts — ask).
• An asset group structure that reflects your product lines, not one mega group with everything.
• A conversion-value column that actually reflects margin, not just revenue.
• Branded-traffic exclusion — don’t let PMax take credit for searches of your own name.

PMax is a black box — but it’s a black box you can put guardrails around. Most accounts that struggle with PMax haven’t set the guardrails.

What the audit saved

On that tradie account: $1,650/mo of obvious waste identified in the first week. We redirected $900 of that to their best-performing branded and high-intent local campaigns. The other $750 was just cut. Leads went up 22% in the next 30 days on lower total spend.

This isn’t genius work. It’s the maintenance that account managers are supposed to do. It’s also the maintenance that almost nobody actually does.

The compounding bit

Here’s what most people miss: Google’s algorithm learns from whatever conversions you feed it. If half your conversions were from junk clicks (happens more than you’d think), turning that stuff off makes the remaining signal stronger. The algorithm gets better at finding your real customers, because you stopped polluting it.

So the cleanup is worth more than the $ saved. The account gets smarter over the following 30–60 days, with no new effort. That’s where the second wave of lift comes from.

Common pushbacks, answered

Real objections we hear when we share this with clients. Often the disagreement is the most interesting part.

The kit referenced above

Other people, smarter than us

Sources we leaned on, plus a couple we just like. None of these paid to be here.

1. 01
   Optimise Performance Max with account-level negative keywords

   Google Ads Help

   The official doc for the workaround. Buried but real.
2. 02
   Search Partners — what they actually are

   Search Engine Land

   Good plain-English breakdown of which sites are in the network.
3. 03
   PPC Hero: Performance Max guardrails

   PPC Hero

   Long-form on PMax structure. Mostly aligned with what we do.