Google Ads Waste Calculator

How it works

How the estimate is built

This is a benchmark model, not a reading of your account. It compares your click-through and conversion rates against published averages for your industry, then adds a weighting for each common setup gap: no negative keyword list, heavy broad match, unverified conversion tracking, and ads pointing at a homepage instead of a matched landing page. The output is a realistic range, and it is deliberately conservative.

Where the money actually leaks

No negative keywords is the biggest and most common leak. Without them you pay for "free", "jobs", "salary", "course", "DIY" and every neighbouring city you do not serve. Broad match without supervision lets Google spend on loosely related searches. Broken conversion tracking is the quiet killer. Google optimises toward whatever you tell it to count, so if it counts nothing useful, it buys cheap clicks instead of customers. Homepage landing pages waste the click after you have already paid for it.

Fixing it, in order

Start with the search terms report, it shows the actual phrases people typed. Read a month of it and add every irrelevant query as a negative keyword. That one habit typically recovers 15 to 30% of a neglected budget. Next, verify conversion tracking by submitting a real test enquiry and confirming it registers. Then move your core keywords to phrase or exact match. Finally build one landing page per campaign that repeats the ad's promise and asks for exactly one action.

An honest note on benchmarks

Industry averages are useful for orientation and misleading if treated as targets. A 3% click-through rate is healthy for a local service and poor for a branded search. What matters is your cost per genuine lead and whether that lead turns into revenue, not CTR in isolation. If an agency reports on impressions and clicks but never on leads, that is a warning sign.