How to Stop Wasting Money on Google Ads Spam and Attract Quality Leads

By: Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach

Are you getting a bunch of fake or unqualified leads from Google Ads that waste your time and budget? Are your ads showing up on irrelevant, low-quality, or even spammy websites? These are common frustrations for many advertisers, but I've got practical tips for you to fight back.

This matters because spam placements and fake leads waste your ad budget and can hurt your brand image. No one wants their business associated with questionable websites or to spend time chasing down phony inquiries. By understanding how to tackle this issue, you can ensure your ads reach the right audience and drive meaningful results.

Defining the Problem: Do you have "unqualified" or "fake" leads?

Not all low-quality leads are the same. A high volume of calls or form submissions might seem promising, but it’s crucial to analyze the quality of those leads.

• Unqualified leads come from real people who might not be the right fit for your business. They might be "tire-kickers," misinformed about your offerings, looking for job opportunities, or simply not ready to buy.

• Fake leads, on the other hand, are generated by bots or automated systems, often with malicious intent. These result in phony contact information or spam inquiries that disrupt your sales process and waste valuable resources.

It's important to define your specific problem first, so that you can choose the right strategy, or strategies, to fight it.

10 strategies to fight spam leads in Google Ads

While you may not be able to completely eliminate low quality, you can significantly reduce the problem with the right strategies. Here is a six-step action plan to help you combat spam and attract quality leads.

1. Lead in to AI-powered bidding

Your bidding strategy plays a crucial role in attracting quality leads. Shift from a manual CPC strategy to a conversion-focused Smart Bidding strategy. This signals to Google to prioritize ad placements, queries and/or audiences that are more likely to result in valuable actions, like a sale or lead.

Remember, when you use Manual bidding, your campaign is only optimizing for a cheap click. It's not paying attention to whether or not those clicks convert, and it's not trying to get your higher quality clicks. Leave manual bidding behind, start with Maximize Conversions, and aim to get your campaigns onto Target CPA once you have enough conversion volume (typically, 30 conversions in 30 days).

2. Track the full funnel, not just the lead

If you are tracking conversions that happen offline, such as phone calls or in-person sales, be sure to implement Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) in Google Ads. This powerful tool connects your ad data with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, providing valuable feedback to the algorithm to help it filter out spam. A tool like CallRail [affiliate link] can make this process easy.

3. Optimize your ad targeting with audiences

Refine your targeting to attract more qualified leads and reduce irrelevant ad placements.

• Audience Targeting: Add relevant audiences to your Search campaigns in Targeting mode. For example, if you're a renovation company, you could target only homeowners or users who have shown interest in home improvement projects. You can also layer your targeting to reach users who meet multiple criteria.

• Audience Exclusions: Exclude demographics or interests that don't align with your ideal customer profile. For instance, if your products are exclusively for homeowners, exclude renters from your targeting.

New to audiences? You might enjoy my bestselling book, Inside Google Ads: Everything you need to know about Audience Targeting.

4. Consider adding negative keywords

Negative keywords are terms or searches that you think are unlikely to lead to quality leads and customers. Regularly review your search terms, and consider excluding irrelevant queries, such as those that contain words like "career," "job," "cheap," or "free." This can save your budget for higher quality searches, and improve your traffic quality.

5. Use Tech Solutions to Block Bots

If you suspect bots are generating your leads, implement a spam filter like reCAPTCHA on your website forms. This helps prevent bots from submitting spam entries.

6. Adjust your Content Settings for Display & Video

Consider using Content Exclusions in your account or campaign settings to block sensitive content, parked domains, or live streaming. You can also review your "Where Ads showed" report to see if you're wasting money on spammy sites.

7. Add a Qualification Question to Your Form

Ask a specific question in your lead form to filter out unqualified leads. These can be questions about budget or timeline. For example, have a drop-down menu for "estimated budget" and if your services start at $10,000, make sure that's the cheapest option available in the form. People looking for a cheap solution will bounce, and when paired with Smart Bidding, this will teach your bidding algorithm who the right and wrong customers are for your business.

8. Add a "Spam Honeypot" to your form

A simple technique to trick bots is to ask the user to "leave this box unchecked." Bots often can’t read the instructions and will check the box anyway, allowing you to identify them as spam. This is like setting a mousetrap that only bots will get caught in, and you can immediately mark these leads as spam in your CRM, feed that data back to Google Ads via OCT, and train your campaign (via Smart Bidding) not to go after those types of users anymore.

9. Disable Automatically Created Assets

Automatically created assets can sometimes lead to unintended consequences, such as attracting job seekers instead of potential customers. To avoid this, disable this feature in your account settings to gain more control over your ad messaging.

10. Use Demand Gen Campaigns

If you're still struggling to eliminate fake leads from your campaigns, consider switching to Demand Gen campaigns rather than Display. These campaigns limit your ads to Google-owned properties (YouTube, Gmail, Discover), which typically have better safeguards against bots and fraudulent activity, significantly reducing the risk of undesirable placements.

By implementing these strategies, you can minimize spam leads, attract more qualified prospects, and ensure your Google Ads campaigns are delivering the results you want.