How do I stop wasting budget on bad clicks?

1) Identify what “bad clicks” means in your account (because the fix depends on the cause)

Bad clicks usually fall into three buckets

When advertisers say “bad clicks,” they’re usually mixing together three very different problems: clicks that are invalid (bots, automated traffic, accidental double-clicks), clicks that are irrelevant (wrong search intent or wrong content), and clicks that are unqualified (technically relevant, but coming from the wrong device, time of day, location, audience, or network). You fix each one differently, and if you treat them all the same you’ll either over-restrict delivery (and starve the campaign) or keep paying for the same junk traffic with new packaging.

Start by separating “invalid clicks” from “unqualified clicks”

Invalid clicks are filtered by the platform’s monitoring systems and you typically won’t be billed for them. That’s important because if your spike is mostly invalid activity, your best move may be monitoring and documenting patterns rather than knee-jerk tightening that hurts legitimate volume. Add the Invalid clicks and Invalid click rate columns at the campaign level and watch them over time, especially during any sudden traffic jump. If invalid activity is detected after you’ve already been invoiced, credits can be applied later, so it’s worth checking your billing transactions when you see something suspicious.

If you’re seeing lots of clicks but the invalid numbers are low, you’re not dealing with “click fraud” as much as you’re dealing with targeting, query matching, or measurement problems. That’s where most wasted budget actually comes from.

A fast triage checklist to pinpoint where the waste is coming from

Run this in order. You’ll usually find the culprit by step 3.

• Search terms: Pull the Search terms report and sort by spend. Identify themes that are clearly wrong intent and turn them into negatives (immediately), then identify themes that are right intent but poor performance (tighten match types and ad messaging).
• Locations: Compare performance by location and look for spend outside your true service area. Then verify your location option is set to reach people in or regularly in your targeted locations if you’re a local/regional business.
• Networks: If you’re on Search, confirm whether Search Partners are enabled and whether that traffic is helping or hurting. If you’re running multi-network campaign types, verify where your ads are actually serving.
• Placements/content: For Display/Video/Demand Gen/Performance Max, review where ads served and exclude placements that are consistently low quality or brand-unsafe. Apply account-level exclusions where appropriate so you’re not playing whack-a-mole campaign by campaign.
• Time & device: Check day-of-week and hour-of-day performance, and device performance. Waste often concentrates on late-night mobile traffic for lead gen.
• Measurement sanity check: Confirm you’re optimizing to real business outcomes (qualified leads, sales, calls) rather than clicks. If you’re bidding for traffic and measuring outcomes loosely (or not at all), “bad clicks” will keep winning the auction.

2) Stop wasting spend on irrelevant search traffic (the highest-ROI fixes for most accounts)

Use Search terms to build a “negative keyword system,” not one-off negatives

The Search terms report is your best defense against paying for the wrong intent. The goal isn’t to add a handful of negatives; it’s to build a repeatable process where you mine queries weekly (or daily in high-spend accounts), convert obvious mismatches into negatives, and continuously refine your keyword map so you’re paying for the right intent at the right price.

To make this scalable, use shared negative keyword lists where they make sense (for example: “jobs,” “free,” “definition,” “how to,” “DIY,” “used,” “manual,” etc., depending on your business). Then keep campaign-specific negatives for nuanced conflicts (for example, separating “enterprise” vs “small business,” or “repair” vs “replacement”).

Apply account-level negative keywords where they prevent predictable waste

Account-level negative keywords let you maintain one central list that can apply across Search and Shopping inventory in multiple campaign types. This is ideal for universal “never want” intents (employment, training, customer service, parts/manuals, etc.). Treat this list like your safety rail: conservative, stable, and reviewed monthly so you don’t accidentally block growth terms.

Keep in mind there are limits on how many you can add at the account level, so prioritize the highest-frequency, highest-cost junk intents first rather than dumping every edge case into the master list.

If Performance Max is taking brand clicks (or competitor brand clicks), use brand exclusions first

When Performance Max “wastes budget,” a common pattern is that it leans on brand queries because they convert cheaply and predictably. If you already run brand in its own Search campaign (which you should in most mature accounts), you’ll want to stop Performance Max from siphoning those clicks.

Brand exclusions are built specifically for that job and are more comprehensive than standard negatives because they can block your brand name plus common misspellings and closely related brand variants. If you need Shopping to continue to show while excluding brand on Search, configure the exclusion behavior accordingly so you don’t accidentally suppress valuable Shopping demand.

Fix location leakage (this one silently burns budgets)

If you only serve customers in a specific area, the default location setting that includes people who’ve shown interest in your locations can absolutely waste spend. Switch your location option so ads reach people in or regularly in your targeted locations when your business model requires physical presence (local services, clinics, restaurants, in-person appointments, etc.).

Then tighten the message so you “self-qualify” clicks. Adding the city/region into headlines and descriptions won’t just improve relevance; it reduces curiosity clicks from people outside your market who were never eligible to buy from you.

Stop optimizing for clicks if your goal is revenue or qualified leads

Maximize Clicks can be useful for short, controlled data collection, but it’s the fastest way to buy a lot of low-intent traffic if left unchecked. The long-term fix is to set up conversion measurement properly (purchases, qualified lead submits, calls, offline outcomes where possible), then move to conversion-focused bidding like Maximize Conversions (optionally with a Target CPA) or value-based bidding strategies when you can assign meaningful values.

In plain terms: if you tell the system “get me clicks,” it will get you clicks. If you tell it “get me outcomes,” it has a reason to avoid the cheap, curious traffic that doesn’t convert.

3) Shut off low-quality clicks from networks, placements, devices, and timing (without over-restricting growth)

Audit Search Partners instead of assuming it’s “more of the same”

Search Partners can expand reach, but the traffic quality isn’t always equivalent to core search traffic. If you’re seeing inflated click volume with weak conversion rates, test excluding Search Partners for a clean comparison. You can opt out at the campaign level, and you can also use site exclusions to block specific partner websites when you identify repeat offenders.

Also note that account-level placement exclusions can apply more broadly than many advertisers realize, including coverage that extends into partner inventory. That makes centralized exclusions far more powerful than maintaining dozens of one-off blocks.

Use placements and Content suitability controls to block the worst inventory fast

For Display/Video/Demand Gen/Performance Max, the quickest “budget leak plugs” come from exclusions: removing spammy placements, excluding low-quality mobile app inventory, tightening content categories, and selecting appropriate inventory types and excluded content themes for your brand’s risk tolerance.

If you manage multiple campaigns (or multiple accounts), use shared exclusion lists and keep them updated. If you’re serious about brand safety and click quality at scale, schedule automatic uploads of placement exclusion lists so your blocks stay consistent over time without manual maintenance.

Brand suitability controls have expanded over time across more feed-based inventory environments, which matters because a lot of accidental, low-intent clicks come from feed placements that look “native.” If you’re advertising in YouTube feed environments or Discover-style placements, review inventory type and theme exclusions carefully and align them to what you’d be comfortable appearing next to.

Use ad scheduling as a scalpel (and know the operational limits)

If you have clear business-hour dependence (for example, you only answer phones 9–5, or leads only get handled during staffed hours), ad scheduling can remove a big chunk of low-quality clicks that happen when nobody is available to convert demand into revenue. By default, campaigns can run all day, but you can limit days/hours and adjust bids by time windows. Operationally, you can create up to 6 ad schedules per day per campaign, and schedules run based on your account time zone. Ad scheduling isn’t compatible with certain campaign types (notably App campaigns), so confirm eligibility before building a time-based strategy around it.

Control devices and demographics without fighting Smart Bidding

Device and demographic segments are often where “bad clicks” hide—especially mobile for lead gen. But be careful: if you’re using Smart Bidding strategies, most manual bid adjustments are ignored, because the system is already optimizing bids in real time. The major practical exception is that you can still use a -100% device adjustment to fully opt out of a device category when you have strong evidence it’s waste (for example, persistent accidental-click patterns on mobile with no meaningful conversions).

If you’re on Target CPA, device adjustments behave differently than manual bidding: they modify the effective CPA target by device rather than directly changing the bid. That can be useful when mobile is viable but needs stricter efficiency than desktop.

For campaigns that support demographic controls (commonly Display and Demand Gen), don’t default to excluding “Unknown” segments unless you’ve proven they’re waste. Instead, start by analyzing performance by age, gender, household income (where available), and parental status, and only apply exclusions where the data is stable enough to justify reduced reach.

Use IP exclusions only for specific, provable cases

IP exclusions can help when you have a concrete reason to block traffic from known sources (internal office IPs, QA teams, repeat clickers you can identify, certain vendors). They’re not a substitute for proper geo targeting, and they require care because IPs can exist in different versions. Also, if you set IP exclusions at both account and campaign level, the lists combine for that campaign—useful, but easy to forget months later when someone wonders why traffic dropped.

Make “bad clicks” harder to buy with better qualifying ads and landing pages

Finally, don’t overlook the simplest lever: make your ads harder to click for the wrong person. Clear pricing cues, service-area language, eligibility requirements, and product/service specificity reduce curiosity clicks. Then make the landing page do its job: fast load time, message match, and a conversion path that reflects real intent (for lead gen, a short form for top-funnel and a longer “qualified lead” form for high-intent traffic often outperforms a single one-size-fits-all form).

If you’re trying to stop wasting budget on “bad clicks,” it helps to separate what’s truly invalid (often already filtered by Google) from what’s irrelevant or simply unqualified, then build a repeatable routine around search terms and negatives, geo “leakage,” network and placement performance, time/device pockets of low quality, and making sure you’re optimizing to real conversions rather than clicks. If you want a bit of help turning that routine into ongoing, concrete actions, Blobr connects to your Google Ads account and uses specialized AI agents to continuously spot waste (like junk queries that should become negatives, mismatched landing pages, or underperforming inventory) and surface clear, prioritized recommendations you can apply when it makes sense for your goals.