My Google Ads are not converting, what do I check first?

When a campaign stops converting, the instinct is to change the ads, the bids, or the budget. Do not. If the conversion tracking is broken, every change you make is based on a number that is wrong. Ads that are working look dead. Smart Bidding, which learns from conversions, starts guessing. The first check is always whether the reported number is real.

Go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary. Each conversion action has a status. Recording conversions means the tag has fired recently. No recent conversions means the tag is set up but has not fired in a while, which could be a real dry spell or a page that changed. Inactive means the tag has not fired in a long time. Unverified means Google has never seen it fire. Tag inactive on a website action means the Google tag itself is not loading.

Then test it yourself. Open your site with Google Tag Assistant, submit a test form or click the phone number, and watch for the conversion event. If it does not fire, the campaign may have been converting all along. Common breakers are a website redesign that dropped the tag, a new form tool, a thank-you page URL that changed, a cookie consent banner that blocks tags, and a tag manager container that was published with the trigger disabled.

Once you trust the numbers, find out who is clicking. The search terms report shows the actual phrases people typed before they clicked your ad. It is under Insights and reports on the campaign. Sort by cost. If the expensive searches are jobs, free, DIY, a different city, a product you do not sell, or a competitor's brand, you are paying for people who were never going to buy.

Broad match is the usual reason. Broad match lets Google match your keyword to searches it thinks are related, and related is a loose word. Phrase match keeps the meaning. Exact match keeps the meaning and the close variants. If your campaign is mostly broad match with Smart Bidding and few conversions, Google has very little signal and will wander.

Add the bad searches as negative keywords, in a shared list so every campaign benefits. Move the searches that did convert into their own ad group with exact and phrase match. This single step often fixes a not converting campaign because the clicks were never the right clicks.

Now the clicks are honest and the tracking is honest. If people still do not convert, the page is not doing its job. Open the exact URL the ad sends to, on a phone, on cellular data. Does it load in a few seconds? Does the headline say the same thing the ad promised? Is the price, the area you serve, and the next step visible without scrolling? Is the phone number a tap-to-call link? Is the form short?

A homepage is rarely the right destination. It offers ten paths and answers no single question. A page built for the ad group's one service, with one clear action, converts better. If the ad says emergency plumber and the page starts with company history, the visitor leaves.

Check the mechanics too. A form that posts to an inbox nobody reads, a booking widget that fails on iPhone, or a chat pop-up that covers the button are all conversion killers that never show up in Google Ads. Submit your own form and call your own number from the page once a month.

The last check is the bid strategy. Target CPA and Target ROAS need a steady flow of conversions to learn from. If the campaign gets only a few conversions a month, those strategies chase noise. They also react to whatever the conversion action tells them. If a broken action was fixed in step one, put the strategy back into learning and give it a week or two before you judge it.

For a small account, Maximize conversions with no target, or Maximize clicks with a sensible max CPC, gives Google room to find conversions again. Make sure the right actions are marked Primary so bidding uses them, and that a low value action like a page view is not marked Primary and stealing the strategy's attention. Set a conversion window that matches how long your customers take to decide.

If you have fixed tracking, cleaned search terms, and improved the page, and results are still poor after a few weeks, the offer or the market is the question, not the account. That is where a full audit helps. Every SearchPod Google Ads engagement starts with the four checks above, priced at 10% of the ad budget with a $600 monthly minimum, no setup fee, and a 30-day you-don't-pay guarantee.