This module is different: it does not teach you how something is done, it teaches you how it gets broken. Each lesson collects the mistakes we have found most often when taking over real accounts (Suite clients, anonymised), with the fast way to spot them and the way to fix them. We start with structure, because its mistakes contaminate everything else.
Mistake 1 · The "General" campaign (or "Search", or the company name)
Case: a vocational training academy with 14 different courses and one Search campaign with one ad group per course... and a single budget of €60/day. The most searched (and cheapest) course ate 70% of the money; the high-margin courses barely showed. Nobody could say what it cost to acquire a student for each course.
How to spot it: one campaign with lots of ad groups covering different topics and a budget that is permanently "limited". In the ad group report, the spend concentrates in one or two.
How to fix it: split by economics (Module 2): campaigns per course or family of courses with their own budget and target. You do it by creating the new campaigns and pausing the old ad groups, not deleting: the keywords' quality history is preserved if the copies keep the same text and the same page.
Mistake 2 · Brand mixed in with generic
Case: a clinic with a "spectacular" ROAS of 12 in its only campaign. Segmenting by keyword: 80% of the conversions came from its own name; the generic keywords had a ROAS of 1.5. They had spent a year raising the campaign's budget "because it was doing great", and every extra euro went to unprofitable generic traffic.
How to spot it: segment conversions by keyword and look for the company name. If it concentrates the majority, the aggregate ROAS is a lie.
How to fix it: a separate brand campaign (small budget, target impression share), the brand added as a negative in the generic campaign, and then judge the generic side again on its own numbers. Brace yourself: they are almost always worse than they looked, and that is exactly the truth you needed.
Mistake 3 · The junk drawer
Case: an ad group called "Plumbing" with 62 keywords (emergencies, quotes, boilers, drain unblocking, plumbing courses...) and one ad that said "Professional plumbers in Madrid". Average Quality Score 4; ad relevance "below average" on 50 of the 62.
How to spot it: ad groups with more than 30 keywords, low relevance across the board, and one ad that cannot possibly answer them all. And the definitive test: try writing a 30-character headline that works for all of them. You can't.
How to fix it: the three-step method from Module 2. In this case, four ad groups (emergencies, quotes, drain unblocking, boilers) and "courses" moved to negatives. Six weeks later: average QS 7, CPA a third lower, without touching bids.
Mistake 4 · The same keyword in three match types (and in three ad groups)
Case: an online shop with [running shoes], "running shoes" and running shoes in three different ad groups, each with its own ad, "to keep control".
All three competed in the same auctions; Google picked by Ad Rank, and the
report was unreadable: three rows for the same intent, none of them with enough
data to decide anything.
How to spot it: search the keywords for the same text with different symbols; ad groups with names like "Running - Exact", "Running - Phrase".
How to fix it: one ad group per intent with exact + phrase (and broad only with Smart Bidding and data, Module 3). Pause the duplicates, do not delete them, in case you need to consult their history.
The five-minute structure audit
- How many campaigns are there, and how many are called "General" or the company name? → Mistake 1.
- Conversions by keyword: does the brand concentrate the majority in a mixed campaign? → Mistake 2.
- Ad groups with more than 30 keywords or low relevance across the board → Mistake 3.
- The same keyword text with different symbols → Mistake 4.
💡 Ninja trick: all four mistakes are visible in the QS Analyzer sheet without opening Google Ads: ad groups with low relevance and many keywords, match type duplicates and the concentration of conversions per keyword. And its «Restructure ad groups» tab proposes how to split the junk drawer and carries it out from a checkbox.
What you should remember
- Campaign = budget + objective: if you cannot say what each product costs, the structure is wrong.
- Brand always separate, or the account's ROAS lies.
- One ad group = one intent that deserves the same ad.
- One keyword, one ad group: exact + phrase; no triplicates.
- Fix by creating and pausing, not deleting.