Broad match with no negatives
Google will spend your budget on loosely related searches - jobs, DIY, "free", competitor research - unless a negative keyword list actively stops it.
Home · Channels · Google Ads
Google Ads lead generation
Fewer leads than Meta, and they cost more. They're also people who typed the problem into a search box ten seconds ago - which is a completely different conversation for your sales team.
Book a free 30-minute auditWhy Google accounts waste money
You're bidding on intent - and paying for the intent you didn't want
Four ways search budget disappears without anything obvious showing up in the dashboard.
Calls nobody answers
Running call campaigns outside staffed hours is the most expensive mistake in this account type. You pay full price for a ring-out.
Everything goes to the homepage
A search for one specific service landing on a general homepage wastes the intent you just paid a premium for.
PMax running unsupervised
Performance Max will happily spend on cheap display placements and report them as conversions. Without exclusions and clean data it flatters itself.
Search budgets are small enough that waste hurts immediately - there's no volume to hide it in.
What we run on Google
Buying the searches that end in a phone call
- Intent
Search split by intent, not lumped together
Ready-to-buy, comparison and research searches behave differently and shouldn't share a budget. Separated, you can see and control what each is costing you.
- Calls
Calls only when someone can answer
Paying full price for a ring-out is the most expensive mistake in this account type, and it is entirely avoidable.
- Waste
Waste stripped out weekly, not at launch
Search terms get reviewed every week. On a new account this alone commonly removes a fifth to a third of spend in the first month.
- Pages
Pages matched to the search
A specific search landing on a general page wastes the intent you paid a premium for. Message match also lowers what you pay per click across the account.
- Signal
Outcomes fed back to the platform
So bidding chases the searches that produced customers rather than the ones that produced forms.
Google vs Meta
Two channels, two jobs
- 01
Google captures demand
People already looking. Lower volume, higher cost per lead, much higher intent - and they often want to talk today.
- 02
Meta creates demand
People who weren't looking. High volume, low cost, and the only option when nobody is searching for what you sell.
- 03
Most accounts need both
Search caps out at the size of existing demand. Meta scales past it. Running only one usually means either a volume ceiling or a quality problem.
- 04
Which comes first
If people search for your category, start on Google - it's faster to prove. If they don't, Google has nothing to buy and Meta is the only real option.
For events, Google is a small branded play at best - Meta does the work there. For urgent services, Google often produces your best leads outright.
Google questions
What people ask about Google Ads
- Google leads cost far more than Meta. Is it worth it?
- Compare cost per customer, not cost per lead. Search leads typically convert several times better because the person was actively looking. A ₹600 Google lead closing at 20% beats a ₹100 Meta lead closing at 2%. Whether that holds in your business is exactly what the audit checks.
- Should we run Performance Max?
- Sometimes - but not as the first thing, and never unsupervised. PMax needs clean conversion data to work, and without it, it spends into cheap placements and reports flattering numbers. We'd normally establish search campaigns with reliable conversion tracking first, then test PMax against them.
- What's the minimum budget for Google Ads?
- Lower than Meta, because you're buying a smaller pool of high-intent searches. Many local service accounts run productively on ₹30,000–50,000 a month. The real constraint is search volume in your category and city, which we check before quoting anything.
- We get calls but they're the wrong kind.
- Usually the search terms report, not the targeting. Broad match plus a thin negative list means you're paying for adjacent searches. Reviewing actual search terms and recordings for a week normally identifies the source quickly.
- Do you run our account or your own?
- Yours. You own the account, the conversion history and the data. If we part ways, everything stays with you.
Paying for searches that don't convert?
Book a free 30-minute audit. We'll pull your search terms report and show you what share of spend is going to searches you never wanted.