Six Google Ads settings that leak a local budget

The leaks we find in local Google Ads accounts rarely sit in the ad copy. They sit in settings left at Google’s defaults, or switched on by someone nobody remembers. Here are the six we check first, in order, with menu names as Google’s Ads Help pages gave them in October 2026.

Start with where your ads are allowed to show

Each campaign’s Locations settings offer “Presence or Interest” and “Presence”. Google’s help page calls the first the “default and recommended option.” It reaches people in your area and people interested in it, judged from their searches, a recent visit, or content they viewed. Interest can cross an ocean: someone in Paris who searches “Los Angeles taxi” on google.fr may count as interested in Los Angeles.

The evidence offered for the default: travel, real estate and education advertisers saw 5% more conversions on Search after switching from Presence to Presence or Interest, in internal data from May 21 to June 1, 2022. Those buyers plan from somewhere else. A water heater in Tulsa gets replaced for someone standing in Tulsa.

What to change. Set Presence on any campaign for work done at the customer’s address, then compare leads before and after. Expect fewer impressions; in a local service account, that is the point. Do not wait for the “Matched locations” report to prove the leak: the places it lists “could be users’ physical locations or locations of interest,” so a click from two states away can sit under your own town’s name.

Then read what people actually typed

Keywords are what you bid on; search terms are what people typed, and local waste hides in the gap. Select Campaigns in the left navigation, then Search terms under Insights and reports. Sort the last 90 days by cost, and turn on the hidden “Keyword” column (the column icon, then Attributes) to see which keyword pulled each search in.

In a home services account, hunt for searches like “plumber salary”, “how to unclog a drain yourself” or “HVAC school near me”. Each one becomes a negative keyword, the most expensive first.

Next, ask whether broad match has anything to steer by

A keyword typed without quotes or brackets is broad match. Google’s keyword matching page says broad match “is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned,” that it can show ads on searches that “don’t contain the direct meaning of your keywords,” and that “it’s critical to use Smart Bidding with broad match.”

Smart Bidding bids on the odds of a conversion, so it must know what a real one is. The leak is broad match under Maximize clicks or Manual CPC, or under Smart Bidding fed conversions that are not leads. Read the match type column on the Keywords page, then the bid strategy in campaign settings. Broad keywords bidding for clicks, or chasing a conversion you do not trust, should move to phrase or exact until tracking is fixed.

Make sure a conversion means a real lead

Smart Bidding chases the primary actions in your goals, and Google warns that misconfiguring them “can prevent Smart Bidding from optimizing effectively.” If a contact page view is primary, the campaign is paid to find people who look at pages.

Tidy accounts still miss Count, set to One or Every on each action. The counting page calls One a good choice for leads, since “usually only one, unique lead per ad click likely adds value for your business.” Yet when nobody chose, it lists Every as the default for website actions and for “clicks on your number on your mobile website,” while calls from ads default to One. Check what yours says. A homeowner who taps your number three times during a burst pipe can become three conversions, and bidding learns that search is worth triple.

What to change. Click the Goals icon, then Conversions, then Summary. Open each primary action, read what fires it, and set anything that is a lead (a form, a call, a chat) to One. The change applies only to conversions from then on. Booked jobs take a further step: a CRM that marks a lead as booked.

Look past Google Search to the other networks

Search partners “are included by default” in a new Search campaign: non-Google sites, plus YouTube search results and Watch pages. With “Include Google Display Network” ticked, the campaign also spends on websites and apps through Display Expansion.

On October 15, 2026, Google began rolling out channel prioritization. Google Search, search partners and the Display Network each get High or Low priority, all starting at High, and a Low channel can take a daily budget allocation: 5% on a $1,000 average daily budget aims to keep that channel at or below $50 a day, and 0% means no spend there.

Priority only moves spend when a campaign is limited by budget; an allocation applies either way. Search campaigns with Display turned on switch over the following February; saving priorities sooner replaces the old setup at once.

On the Campaigns page, hover over the campaign, select the gear icon and open “Networks”. Unless you have a reason, uncheck both “Include Google search partners” and “Include Google Display Network”. If you keep Display, set it to Low with an allocation in the Channel Prioritization card (account settings, or the campaign’s own settings to change one campaign); Low at 50% matches the old setup.

Last, find out who else is changing the account

The first suspect is auto-apply (Recommendations in the Campaigns menu, then Auto-apply settings). Its options include “Add broad match keywords,” “Expand your reach with Google search partners” and “Use Display expansion.” If someone opted the account into those, it can add broad keywords or switch the network settings above back on by itself. The History tab lists what it recently changed, and Change history shows each applied recommendation.

The second is Google itself, which said campaigns using automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting would be upgraded to AI Max starting in September 2026. If yours used either and now runs AI Max, search term matching reaches past your keywords much like broad match, so the search terms check matters twice as much. Final URL expansion can also land a click on other pages, so add URL exclusions for careers or blog pages that do not sell a job. Dynamic Search Ads campaigns follow the February after that.

Send us view access and we will read the parts owners rarely open: Change history for who switched what on, what fires each primary conversion, and whether a campaign was moved to AI Max. Your free plan names the leak costing you most and the order to fix the rest, and it is yours whether or not you hire us. Our Google Ads management for plumbing, HVAC and roofing companies starts from that same review, in accounts that stay in your name.