Automated bidding in Google Ads does not know what good business looks like. It only knows what the conversion data shows it. If the data is wrong, the system is not failing: it is doing exactly what you asked, just not what you wanted.
These five mistakes are the ones I keep finding in accounts. None of them needs a developer to uncover.
If form submissions, phone click throughs and newsletter signups all sit in the primary column, bidding treats them as equal. The newsletter is the easiest to get, so that is where it will push.
Check: Goals, Conversions, Summary. Look at what has primary status. Anything that is not a business result belongs in secondary.
Without value, every conversion is worth the same. A 200 EUR enquiry and a 20 000 EUR enquiry look identical to the system.
If you cannot pass a real value, a differentiated estimate still beats nothing. A static value per service type, for example.
If a conversion arrives once through the Google Ads tag and once through a GA4 import, it is counted twice. The tell is a suspiciously good ROAS that never shows up in the bank account.
Check: Compare the Google Ads conversion count with the actual order or lead count in your CRM or shop for the same day. If Ads shows more, look for the duplicate.
The default is 30 days. If your sales cycle is six weeks, some conversions never make it back to the campaign that created them. If it is set to 90 days for an impulse product, you are crediting purchases to campaigns that had nothing to do with them.
If you advertise in the EU and consent mode is not set up properly, you either lose a share of your conversions or collect data you are not allowed to collect. Both are problems, just different ones.
All five can be worked through in an afternoon. The order matters: primary list first, then duplication, and only then value and window. If the first two are wrong, tuning the rest is pointless.
If you are not confident that the data in your account is sound, do not optimise the campaign. Fix the measurement first.
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