If you’re a business owner or marketing manager who has tried Google Ads or PPC in the past and been left unsure whether it really worked, this may sound familiar. You might have run campaigns yourself or worked with an Google Ads agency, but the results never quite inspired confidence. Leads were inconsistent, costs felt high, or the return simply didn’t stack up.

If paid ads left you with more questions than answers, this series of 3 articles is designed to help you understand where things commonly break down and why.

Ready to understand where your PPC can improve? Answer 10 questions to highlight what’s working, what isn’t, and where to focus next.

Why didn’t Google Ads work for my business?

This is one of the most common questions we hear, and it’s a fair one.

You invest time and money, perhaps even engage a Google Ads agency. Clicks come in, reports show activity, and yet the results never quite stack up. Leads are inconsistent, costs creep up, and confidence fades. Eventually, someone concludes that "Google Ads doesn’t work for us”.

In reality, Google Ads rarely fails on its own. More often, it exposes weaknesses elsewhere in the either the setup or even the business itself.

What does “Google Ads not working” actually mean?

When someone says Google Ads didn’t work, they usually mean one of three things:

it didn’t generate enough leads
the leads weren’t good enough
it didn’t feel worth the cost compared to the revenue generated

Those outcomes matter, but they’re symptoms, not diagnoses.

Without a clear definition of success, campaigns tend to be judged emotionally or retrospectively. One month feels expensive. Another feels quiet. Decisions get made reactively, and confidence erodes.

Before asking whether Google Ads worked, it’s worth asking a few more basic questions...

Did we define success before running ads?

This is where most problems begin.

If success wasn’t clearly defined before the campaign launched, optimisation becomes guesswork. You might optimise for clicks because that’s what’s visible. Or for cost per lead, because that’s what the dashboard highlights. But in isolation, neither necessarily reflects business value.

A campaign can generate leads and still fail the business. It can also look unprofitable while quietly producing insight or opportunity.

Without agreed success criteria, it’s impossible to tell which is which.

Is lead volume the right measure of success?

For many businesses, lead volume becomes the default benchmark simply because it’s easy to track.

But not all leads are equal. Ten low-intent enquiries can cost more time and money than one well-qualified conversation. When lead volume becomes the primary goal, campaigns are often pushed broader to increase numbers, which reduces quality and inflates costs.

This is one of the fastest ways for Google Ads to feel like it’s “not working”, even though it’s doing exactly what it’s being asked to do.

Were we clear on who the ads were really for?

Targeting settings and keywords are only part of the picture. The more important question is whether the business genuinely understood who they wanted to attract and why those people would choose them.

Many campaigns are built around products or services rather than situations. Ads describe what the company does, not what problem or pain point the customer is trying to solve. As a result, clicks come from people at very different stages of intent.

When this happens, performance looks inconsistent because it is inconsistent. The ads aren’t wrong, but they’re trying to speak to too many motivations at once.

Can Google Ads fail even when clicks look healthy?

Yes, and this is where frustration usually peaks.

Healthy click-through rates and rising traffic create the impression that things are working. When leads or revenue don’t follow, attention often turns to budgets, bids, or platforms.

In practice, this is often a signal that the campaign is doing its job, but the definition of success was never aligned with how the business actually makes money.

Clicks are not outcomes. They’re signals. If those signals aren’t connected to meaningful goals, campaigns drift and confidence disappears.

Is Google Ads worth it for small or growing businesses?

This is a reasonable question, but the answer has less to do with business size and more to do with how clearly the fundamentals are defined.

Google Ads can be highly effective for smaller businesses, but only when the foundations are in place. That means:

clear success criteria
a realistic understanding of customer intent
margins that can support paid acquisition
a process for learning and adjusting over time

Without these, Google Ads tends to magnify uncertainty rather than solve it. Spend increases, pressure rises, and the platform gets blamed for problems that started much earlier.

How do you know whether the foundations were ever in place?

This is the hardest part, especially if campaigns ran months or years ago.

Looking back at dashboards rarely tells the full story. Metrics explain what happened, but not why. And when multiple agencies or internal teams have been involved, context gets lost quickly.

That’s why we built a short PPC Performance Assessment. It’s designed to help businesses reflect on whether the right questions were asked before ads went live, and whether campaigns were set up with a clear direction from the start.

It’s not about judging past decisions. It’s about understanding whether the system gave Google Ads a fair chance to succeed.

What should come before spending another pound on ads?

Before changing platforms, agencies, or budgets, it’s worth slowing down and answering a few uncomfortable questions:

what outcome are we actually trying to achieve?
how will we know if we’re getting closer to it?
who are we trying to attract, and why would they choose us?

When those answers are clear, Google Ads becomes far easier to evaluate and far harder to dismiss as “not working”.

If you’d like to pressure-test whether these foundations were in place for your own campaigns, our PPC scorecard walks through the key areas in a few minutes and highlights where gaps may have existed.

Frequently asked questions

Why didn’t Google Ads work for my business?

In most cases, Google Ads doesn’t fail on its own. Campaigns usually struggle because success wasn’t clearly defined upfront, or because ads were built without a strong understanding of user intent and business outcomes.

What does it actually mean when Google Ads is “not working”?

It usually means leads are inconsistent, costs feel high, or results don’t justify the spend. These symptoms often point to strategic gaps rather than problems with the platform itself.

Is Google Ads worth it for small or growing businesses?

Google Ads can be effective at almost any scale, but only when goals, intent, and margins are clearly understood. Without those foundations, smaller budgets tend to magnify inefficiencies rather than results.

Can Google Ads fail even if it’s getting clicks?

Yes. Clicks are signals, not outcomes. Campaigns can attract traffic while still failing to generate meaningful enquiries or revenue if success metrics are misaligned with the business.

What should be defined before running Google Ads?

Before launching ads, businesses should be clear on what success looks like, who the ads are targeting, why those users would choose them, and how performance will be evaluated beyond surface-level metrics.

How can I tell if my PPC campaigns were set up properly?

Looking at dashboards alone rarely provides the full picture. A structured review of goals, intent, setup, and decision-making is often needed to understand whether campaigns had the right foundations to succeed.

We have created a PPC Performance Assessment that will help you determine why PPC has failed (or at least not performed as expected) for your business in the past.