Find the leak before you touch anything
Google Ads is a chain of small steps. Someone searches, sees your ad, clicks, lands on your page, calls or fills in a form, gets through to a human, gets a quote, and books. If any link is weak, the whole thing looks like 'Google Ads doesn't work'.
Before you change a bid or blame the platform, pull up the last 30 days and write down four numbers: impressions, clicks, calls or forms from those clicks, and quotes that came out of them. The stage with the biggest drop-off is where you start.
- Plenty of impressions, hardly any clicks: your ad or your targeting is the problem.
- Clicks but no calls: your landing page is the problem.
- Calls but no quotes: your phone handling is the problem, and it's more common than you'd think.
- Quotes but no jobs: that's pricing or follow-up, not Google.
Problem 1: You're paying for the wrong searches
This is the number one money burner for trades. The keyword 'electrician Logan' sounds tight, but with broad match on, Google can show your ad for 'electrician jobs Logan', 'electrician course Brisbane' and 'how to wire a light switch'. Those people click, cost you money, and never call.
Open the search terms report and read every query that got a click in the last month. Anything that isn't a person with a broken thing and a wallet gets added as a negative keyword.
Negative keywords every tradie account needs
- Job seekers: jobs, careers, apprenticeship, salary, TAFE, course, licence test
- DIY crowd: how to, DIY, tutorial, Bunnings, wiring diagram, YouTube
- Bargain hunters: free, cheapest, price list, cost of, reviews of
- Wrong trade: if you're a plumber, block 'electrician' and vice versa, plus 'roof plumber' if you don't do roofs
- Wrong area: suburbs you won't travel to, and interstate towns that share a name with yours
A sparky in Logan I looked at was spending about $180 a week on clicks from 'electrician apprenticeship Logan' and 'electrical wholesaler near me'. Two negative keywords cut his wasted spend by nearly a third without touching a bid.
While you're in there, check match types. For a small account, phrase match on ten to twenty service-plus-suburb terms beats broad match on three generic ones.
Problem 2: Your ad is showing but nobody clicks it
If impressions are healthy and clicks are thin, look at the ad itself. Competing against hipages, Oneflare and a couple of national franchises, your ad needs to read like a local human, not a directory.
- Put the suburb or region in the headline: 'Frankston Plumber, Same-Day Service' beats 'Plumbing Services'.
- Say what makes you pickable: licensed, insured, upfront pricing, on time or the callout is free, 24/7.
- Drop your licence number into a description line. It quietly builds trust with someone comparing five ads.
- Turn on the call asset so your number sits right in the ad on mobile.
Also check whether you're accidentally hiding your own ads. An ad schedule set to business hours only, a daily budget that runs out by 10am, or a location setting limited to a two-suburb radius will all starve impressions. The fix there isn't better copy. It's turning the tap back on.
Problem 3: They click and then vanish
This leak catches most owner-operators. The ad promises 'Hot water repairs Joondalup, call now', and the click lands on a home page with a hero photo, an about-us section and a phone number buried in the footer. At 7pm, with water on the laundry floor, they hit back and call the next ad.
What the landing page needs, in order
- Your phone number as a tap-to-call button at the top, not plain text.
- The exact service from the ad in the headline, using the same words.
- The suburbs you cover, so they know you'll actually come out.
- Two or three reviews with first names and suburbs.
- A short form or booking link for people who'd rather not call.
- A load time under three seconds on a phone. Compress the photos.
Build one page per service, not one page for everything. A dedicated 'blocked drains' page converts a blocked-drain click far better than a generic plumbing page, and Google rewards the match with a better Quality Score, which means cheaper clicks.
Problem 4: They call and you're under a house
Most Google Ads guides skip this stage because they're written for businesses with a reception desk. The ad worked, the page worked, the phone rang, and you were on a ladder or driving. It rang out. Most people don't leave a voicemail. They ring the next tradie.
Work out your answer rate honestly. Pull last week's phone log and count unanswered calls from unknown numbers. If it's more than a handful, your Google Ads problem is a phone problem, and you're paying $15 to $40 a click to hand leads to your competitors.
The practical fix is an automatic text-back. When a call goes unanswered, a message goes out within seconds, something like: 'Hi, it's Dave from Bayside Plumbing. Sorry I missed you, I'm on a job. Reply with your suburb and what's going on and I'll ring you back within the hour.' That message holds the lead until you can get back to them. InstantLead does this automatically and its AI follow-up collects the job details, so you're calling back a qualified lead instead of a mystery number.
Fold after-hours into this too. If your ads run in the evening and nobody answers, either switch the schedule off or make sure a text-back and a booking link are catching what comes in.
Problem 5: You genuinely can't tell what's working
If you can't see which keyword produced which call, you're optimising blind. Worse, if you're on a conversion-based bidding strategy such as Maximise Conversions with no conversion tracking, Google is guessing what a conversion looks like and bidding on the guess.
- Set up call conversions for calls from the ad and calls from the landing page number, with a minimum length of about 60 seconds so misdials don't count.
- Track form submissions and booking confirmations as separate conversions.
- Test it before you spend. Click your own ad, ring the number, and check the conversion shows up in the account within a day.
- Give every lead a source column in whatever you use to track jobs, even a spreadsheet, and note where each quote came from.
Once you know that 'blocked drain Frankston' produced eight calls and five jobs last month while 'plumber near me' produced twenty calls and one job, the budget decisions make themselves.
Problem 6: Your budget is too thin for where you're bidding
Sometimes 'not working' is really 'not enough'. According to LocaliQ's search advertising benchmarks, the average Google Ads cost per click across all industries in 2025 was about USD 5.26, and competitive trade terms in Australian capitals often run well above that. If your daily budget is $15 and clicks are $20, you're getting a click every second day and no data to learn from.
A rough rule: you want at least ten clicks a day before you can judge a campaign. Multiply your actual average cost per click by ten and that's your minimum daily budget. If that's more than you can spend, don't spread thinner. Shrink the scope.
- One service, not all of them. Pick the job with the best margin and the most urgency.
- A tight radius around where you're already working, not the whole metro.
- Business hours only, until you've sorted the text-back and booking side.
It's also worth checking whether Local Services Ads are open for your trade and region. They charge per lead rather than per click, which changes the maths for a small budget.
Problem 7: The settings you set once and forgot
Google's defaults favour Google. A quick pass through campaign settings usually turns up two or three leaks.
- Location targeting on 'presence or interest' instead of 'presence'. You'll show ads to people in Perth reading about Parramatta.
- Search partners and Display expansion switched on. Turn both off for a lead-gen search campaign.
- Auto-applied recommendations enabled. Switch them off and review suggestions yourself.
- A bidding strategy that doesn't match the goal, such as Maximise Clicks when you want calls.
- Ad rotation set to 'optimise' before there's any data, so one ad hogs the spend.
Settings drift. Google adds new defaults every few months, so this check belongs on a calendar, not a one-off.
The 20-minute weekly check
You don't need to live in the account. A short weekly routine catches most of the above before it burns real money.
- Search terms report: add negatives. Five minutes.
- Check the four funnel numbers against last week.
- Read your missed-call log and make sure every lead got a reply.
- Pause any keyword with 30 clicks and no conversions.
- Once a month: re-read the ads, swap in a fresh review on the landing page, run the settings pass.
Done consistently, that's the difference between an account that quietly bleeds and one that pays for the ute.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should I give Google Ads before deciding it isn't working?
What's a reasonable cost per lead for a tradie in Australia?
Should I use broad match keywords?
Is it better to send ad clicks to my home page or a separate landing page?
Do I need conversion tracking if all I care about is phone calls?
Stop paying for calls you can't answer
Every check in this guide makes your ads cheaper or your page better, but none of it matters if the lead rings while you're on the tools and gives up. InstantLead texts back every missed call within seconds, uses AI to collect the job details and suburb, and lets customers book a time on their own, so the clicks you've paid for turn into quotes instead of voicemails. The first month is free at portal.instantlead.com.au/register, and set-up takes about ten minutes. If you'd like a hand working out where your own funnel is leaking, get in touch and we'll walk through it with you.