Why your Google Ads get clicks but no calls or leads, and how to fix it

Before anything else, check what the account calls a conversion. In Google Ads, go to Goals, then Conversions. If you see only “Clicks”, “Page views” or nothing at all, the account cannot tell a lead from a visit, and its automatic bidding is learning from the wrong signal.

Google Ads can track calls from ads (call assets and call-only ads), calls to a Google forwarding number shown on your website, clicks on your phone number on a mobile site, and calls imported from another system. For the first two you set a minimum call length, so a two-second wrong number does not count as a lead. Add your contact and quote forms as conversions too.

Google describes the search terms report as the way to know how your ads performed when triggered by actual searches. In practice it is a list of what people typed before they clicked. Sort by cost, last 30 days, and read the top 50.

Mark every term that could never become a customer: job seekers (“plumber jobs”, “electrician salary”), do-it-yourselfers (“how to fix a leaking tap”), bargain hunters (“free estimate template”), other cities and competitors you cannot serve. Add them as negative keywords, which Google says let you exclude search terms from your campaigns. Repeat every week for the first two months, then every two weeks.

Example with stated assumptions, not a client result. An HVAC company spends $2,400 in a month at $6 a click: 400 clicks and 6 recorded leads. The owner reads the search terms report and the location report.

Suppose 70 clicks were job and training searches, 45 were from cities outside the service area, and 35 were “how to” searches: 150 clicks, or about $900, that could not become customers. The remaining 250 relevant clicks produced the 6 leads, a 2.4% conversion rate, which points to the landing page: it was the homepage, with the phone number in the footer.

After negatives, the Presence setting and a furnace repair page with the number at the top, the same $2,400 buys about 400 clicks that are nearly all relevant. At a still modest 6% conversion rate that is 24 leads. The point of the example is the order: stop the leaks, then fix the page, then decide if the budget is right.

Sometimes the leads arrive and the business loses them: calls go to voicemail at lunch, forms land in an inbox nobody checks, quotes go out three days later. Harvard Business Review’s study of online sales leads found most companies do not respond nearly fast enough. Listen to ten recorded calls and time your replies to the last ten forms before you blame the ads. Our article on automating lead follow-up with AI covers the fix.