WHAT IS IN THE TOTAL

Chronic-offender 30-day cumulative damage is shown separately below as a recurring-pattern signal. It is not added into this total, to avoid double-counting (chronic queries that also spent at threshold this week are already in the 7-day line above).

CHECK YOUR TRACKING FIRST · LOW CONVERSION RATE

Your account-wide conversion rate is 1.08%. That is low enough to be suspect on its own.

The most common cause of a number this low is not bad traffic. It is incomplete conversion tracking. Phone calls not tied to clicks. Form-fills firing the wrong event, or no event at all. Offline conversions not uploaded. GA goals not mirrored as Google Ads primary conversions. Every "zero-conversion waste" finding below assumes the conversions Google Ads sees are the conversions that actually happened. If half your real leads come through the phone and are not being tracked, half of what is flagged below may actually be working.

CRITICAL · CHRONIC OFFENDERS

5 queries have been wasting money for 30+ days.

These queries showed up in your zero-conversion list this week AND in your zero-conversion list 30 days ago. Cumulative damage so far: $2,960.90. Your agency has had a full month to add these as negatives or build campaigns around them. They have not.

CLEAR WASTE · $1,324.40

REVIEW WITH THE BUSINESS · $1,636.50

These chronic queries match a service line that businesses in your industry (roofing) sometimes do offer. Do not auto-negative these. Check first: if this is a service you offer, build a campaign around it instead of blocking it. If you don’t offer it, then yes, negative away.

THIS WEEK · ZERO-CONVERSION WASTE

22 queries · $1,354.85 spent · zero conversions

NOT IN THE TOTAL · HIGH-CPL CONVERTERS (LIKELY YOUR BEST LEADS)

4 queries with conversions at CPL 3x+ above the rest of your account.

Baseline CPL (a trimmed average of your converting non-brand queries, with the highest-CPL outliers excluded so the comparison is not circular): $424.33. Raw account-wide average for comparison: $730.00.

These are listed but excluded from your total flagged amount. Your industry preset (roofing) is a high-AOV vertical: storm damage, emergency repair, insurance-claim, or financing-intent queries here are usually the account’s best leads, not waste. A $3,000 CPL on a $25,000 job is a 0.12 cost-of-lead ratio, which is excellent. The OVERAGE column still shows what each row spent above a baseline-CPL hypothetical, useful for LTV math, not a number to act on directly.

GEOGRAPHIC LEAKAGE · LAST 30 DAYS

$624.00 spent on users outside your target countries.

Your account targets US, but spent money in 4 other countries. This usually means location targeting is set to "Presence or interest" instead of "Presence." One setting change in Campaign Settings → Locations.

Fix: Campaign settings → Locations → click each campaign's targeted location → "Location options" → change to "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations." Test in audit mode first.

ACCOUNT CONTEXT · LAST 30 DAYS

Total flagged waste this week represents 8.0% of your trailing 30-day spend. There is no industry benchmark worth quoting for “normal” waste. It depends too much on vertical, account maturity, and tracking quality. Watch the trend section above (week-over-trailing-average direction) rather than the absolute percentage.

Brand queries this week: $101.20 · 2 queries

Excluded from waste totals above. These are your brand searches, people who already knew you. If your agency reports these conversions as paid campaign performance, that is its own red flag. Red Flag #1 →

Competitor queries this week: $48.30 · 1 query

Could be intentional conquest targeting or unintentional broad-match overreach. Confirm which campaigns are sourcing them.

WHAT TO ASK YOUR AGENCY

Note on PMax campaigns. Standard account-level negative keywords do not apply to PMax through the normal Google Ads UI. For terms routing to a campaign labelled “PMax…” above, use one of: a shared negative-keyword list applied to PMax via Google support, brand exclusions configured in the PMax campaign settings, or pushing the term into a Search campaign where you can negative it directly. Adding it as a regular account-level negative will look correct but will not actually block it from PMax.

Want someone to go through this with you?

This script flags the patterns. A full audit explains the structural reasons your agency has not caught them, and what the same patterns mean about everything else they are doing.

Generated by a Google Ads Script from ppcredflags.com
Reads your account data only. Does not change settings, bids, or campaigns.
Forward this email to your agency. Their response is its own diagnostic.

PMax data caveat: Performance Max campaigns return less granular search-term data than Search campaigns. If a PMax row above shows partial metrics, that is the Google Ads API’s current behavior, not the script. Cross-reference with the “Search categories” insights inside the PMax campaign for the same window to fill any gaps.