Running Google Ads and getting plenty of clicks?
Great.
But here's the question that really matters:
What are those clicks actually doing for your business? 🤔
It's easy to open Google Ads, see hundreds of clicks and assume the campaign is performing well.
But clicks cost money.
If those visitors aren't turning into enquiries, phone calls, bookings, purchases or another meaningful action, you need to look deeper.
One of the first places to investigate is your Search terms.
And this is something many business owners overlook.
🔍 Keywords and Search Terms Aren't the Same Thing
This is important to understand.
A keyword is something you use within your Google Ads campaign to help determine when your advert may be eligible to appear.
A search term is what the person actually typed into Google.
Those two things aren't always identical.
For example, imagine you're a plumber advertising:
emergency plumber
Depending on your keyword settings and Google's matching systems, your advert could potentially appear for a range of related searches.
Some might be extremely relevant.
Others might not be valuable to your business at all.
That's why checking your Search terms report can be so useful.
It helps you better understand the searches behind your traffic.
💷 Every Click Has a Cost
Imagine your average click costs £3.
You receive 100 clicks.
That's:
£300 in advertising spend.
But imagine 30 of those clicks came from searches that weren't relevant to what you actually offer.
That's potentially a significant amount of budget being spent on the wrong traffic.
This is why simply saying:
“We got 100 clicks this month!”
doesn't tell you enough.
You need to know what happened after those clicks.
🎯 Start With Your Actual Business Goal
Before judging your Google Ads campaign, ask:
What are we actually trying to achieve?
For one business, that might be:
📞 Phone calls
For another:
📝 Enquiry forms
For an e-commerce business:
🛒 Purchases
For another:
📅 Bookings
The important thing is identifying the action that actually matters to your business.
Then your Google Ads reporting can be reviewed in that context.
Because if your objective is generating enquiries, traffic alone isn't the final goal.
📊 Look at Your Conversions
This is where conversion tracking becomes extremely important.
Google Ads can be configured to measure actions that matter to your business.
Depending on your setup, this could include:
✅ Enquiry form submissions
✅ Purchases
✅ Phone calls
✅ Bookings
✅ Other valuable website actions
Without appropriate conversion tracking, you can end up making decisions based mainly on clicks and traffic.
That's like running a shop and counting how many people walked through the door without checking whether anyone bought something.
Traffic matters.
But what happens after someone arrives matters even more.
🔎 Check Your Search Terms
Here's a practical task you can do when reviewing your Google Ads.
Look at the search terms associated with your campaigns.
Ask yourself:
Is this something a potential customer would genuinely search?
Is it relevant to the service I'm advertising?
Is the person likely looking for what I actually sell?
Are particular searches contributing to conversions?
Are irrelevant searches repeatedly consuming budget?
You may discover searches you weren't expecting.
And that's valuable information.
❌ Negative Keywords Can Help Reduce Irrelevant Traffic
Suppose you provide a paid professional training course.
But you're repeatedly receiving clicks from searches containing:
free training
If you don't offer free training, those searches may not be useful to you.
Where appropriate, you could consider using negative keywords to prevent your adverts from showing for certain unwanted searches.
Other examples might include terms such as:
❌ Free
❌ Jobs
❌ DIY
❌ Used
❌ Manual
❌ Course
But here's the important bit:
⚠️ Don't blindly add these words to every campaign.
A negative keyword that's completely irrelevant for one company could remove valuable searches for another.
For example, a training provider obviously shouldn't automatically block the word “course”.
Negative keywords need to reflect your specific business, campaign and customer intent.
⚠️ Be Careful With Negative Keywords
Negative keywords can help reduce irrelevant traffic, but they can also cause problems when used incorrectly.
Imagine you sell premium office furniture.
You notice several searches containing the word:
cheap
You might immediately decide to block it.
But before doing that, look at the actual data.
What if some of those searches are converting?
What if the person searching for a cheaper option sees your product, recognises the additional value and still purchases?
The lesson is simple:
Don't make optimisation decisions based purely on assumptions.
Look at relevance.
Look at intent.
Look at performance.
Then decide.
🧠 Think About Search Intent
Two searches can look similar but represent completely different potential customers.
Consider:
“boiler repair near me”
versus:
“how to repair a boiler myself”
Both contain boiler repair.
But the intent could be completely different.
The first person may be looking for a professional.
The second may be looking for information.
Understanding this distinction can help you evaluate the quality of the traffic your campaign is attracting.
💡 Don't Automatically Chase the Cheapest Click
Another common mistake is assuming cheaper clicks are always better.
Imagine:
Campaign A
Clicks cost £1.
Campaign B
Clicks cost £4.
At first glance, Campaign A looks much better.
But what if Campaign A generates lots of traffic and almost no qualified enquiries?
Meanwhile, Campaign B attracts fewer visitors but produces valuable leads.
Suddenly, the £4 click may be far more useful.
This is why cost per click shouldn't be viewed in isolation.
📈 Look at Cost Per Conversion
Once conversion tracking is set up appropriately, another useful metric to examine is cost per conversion.
Imagine:
Campaign A
💷 Spend: £500
👆 Clicks: 250
🎯 Leads: 5
Approximate cost per lead:
£100
Now compare that with:
Campaign B
💷 Spend: £500
👆 Clicks: 100
🎯 Leads: 20
Approximate cost per lead:
£25
Campaign A produced far more clicks.
Campaign B produced far more leads.
Which one would you rather have?
Exactly.
More clicks don't automatically mean better advertising.
💰 But Even Conversions Don't Tell the Whole Story
Here's where you can take your analysis another step further.
Imagine two campaigns both generate 20 leads.
Campaign A's leads are mostly people asking questions who never become customers.
Campaign B's leads regularly become paying customers.
Technically, both campaigns generated the same number of conversions.
Commercially, they're very different.
That's why businesses should eventually try to understand the journey beyond the initial conversion where their systems allow it.
Think:
Search → Click → Lead → Qualified Lead → Customer → Revenue
The closer you can connect your advertising activity to genuine business results, the better informed your decisions can become.
🌐 Your Website Matters Too
Don't automatically blame Google Ads if you're getting clicks but few conversions.
The advert may have done its job.
It got the right person onto your website.
The problem might happen after the click.
Ask:
📱 Does the page work properly on mobile?
⚡ Is it reasonably quick and easy to use?
👀 Can visitors immediately understand what you offer?
⭐ Is there enough evidence to trust the business?
💷 Is pricing or the quotation process explained where appropriate?
📞 Is contacting you easy?
📝 Is your enquiry form unnecessarily complicated?
A strong Google Ads campaign sending people to a poor landing experience can still struggle.
🔗 Your Advert and Landing Page Should Work Together
Imagine someone searches:
Emergency plumber in Leicester
They see your advert about emergency plumbing.
They click.
But instead of arriving on a page about emergency plumbing, they're sent to a generic homepage covering ten different services.
Now they have to search through the website themselves.
That's unnecessary friction.
Where appropriate, create a clear journey:
🔍 Search
↓
📢 Relevant Advert
↓
🌐 Relevant Landing Page
↓
⭐ Trust & Information
↓
📞 Clear Next Step
Your advert shouldn't exist in isolation.
It's part of the customer journey.
📅 Don't Set Up Google Ads and Forget About It
Google Ads isn't something you necessarily configure once and then ignore for the next six months.
Campaigns should be reviewed.
Depending on the campaign, you may need to examine:
🔍 Search terms
🎯 Conversion performance
💷 Costs
🔑 Keywords
❌ Negative keywords
📢 Advert performance
🌐 Landing pages
📍 Location performance
📱 Device performance
⏰ Time and day performance
Not every metric needs changing every week.
Sometimes the correct decision is to leave something alone and gather more data.
But the account should still be monitored.
🚨 Don't Make Changes Too Quickly Either
There's another side to this.
Some businesses check their advertising every morning and panic.
Yesterday produced no leads?
Change everything.
Cost per click increased?
Pause the campaign.
One keyword didn't convert?
Delete it.
Be careful.
Advertising data needs context.
A small amount of data can produce misleading conclusions.
Look for meaningful patterns rather than reacting emotionally to every daily movement.
📊 A Simple Google Ads Review for Business Owners
You don't need to become a PPC specialist overnight.
But if you're paying for Google Ads, you should have a basic understanding of what you're getting.
When reviewing your campaign, ask:
1️⃣ What are people actually searching?
Check your Search terms.
2️⃣ Are those searches relevant?
Look for mismatches between the search and your offer.
3️⃣ What happens after the click?
Are people converting?
4️⃣ What is a conversion costing?
Compare spend with meaningful results.
5️⃣ Are the conversions valuable?
Where possible, consider lead quality and actual customers.
6️⃣ Is the landing page doing its job?
Don't optimise the advertising while ignoring the website.
7️⃣ Are we wasting budget?
Look for irrelevant traffic and patterns worth investigating.
That's already a much more useful conversation than:
“How many clicks did we get?”
🚀 The Numbers That Matter Depend on Your Business
There isn't one Google Ads metric that's most important for every company.
An online shop might care heavily about:
🛒 Purchases
💰 Revenue
📈 Return on advertising spend
A service business might focus more on:
📝 Enquiries
📞 Calls
💷 Cost per lead
🎯 Qualified leads
Another company might care about bookings.
That's why your advertising needs to start with your business objective.
Once you know what you're trying to achieve, you can decide which numbers deserve your attention.
💡 Stop Celebrating Clicks. Start Investigating Results.
Clicks are useful.
Without clicks, nobody reaches your website from the advert.
But they're only one part of the story.
If you're running Google Ads, don't stop at:
“How many clicks did we get?”
Go deeper.
Ask:
🔍 What did people search?
🎯 What converted?
💷 What did those conversions cost?
❌ Where are we wasting money?
⭐ Are the leads actually good?
💰 Is the advertising contributing to the business?
That's when Google Ads starts becoming less about collecting traffic and more about understanding commercial results.
📣 Need Help With Google Ads?
At Page Crowd, we help businesses manage their digital presence through Google Ads, Meta advertising, social media and website design.
The aim isn't simply to make dashboards look impressive.
It's to understand what happens from the moment someone searches to the moment they take action.
📲 If you're spending money on Google Ads but aren't sure what you're actually getting back, contact Page Crowd today.
And next time you open your Google Ads account, remember:
