The report says the ads are working. Hundreds of impressions, a healthy click-through rate, a couple of hundred clicks last month. Your phone says otherwise: a handful of calls, one of them a bloke selling solar panels.
Clicks without calls is the most common complaint we hear from tradies running Google Ads, and it almost never has a single cause. It’s usually two or three small leaks stacked on top of each other. The good news is they’re findable, and most take minutes to check once you know where to look.
Below are the eight checks we run on a trade business’s account, in the order we run them. The order matters: there’s no point rewriting your landing page if the clicks were never from customers in the first place.
1. Are you actually getting no calls, or just not seeing them?
Start here, because it changes everything after it. Before you touch the ads, count the real enquiries from the last month yourself: calls in your phone log from numbers you didn’t know, website form emails, Facebook messages. Then compare that with what Google Ads says.
If your own count is higher, the ads may be working better than the report shows. In New Zealand this is common, for a specific reason: Google’s forwarding numbers, the feature that lets Google record a call made straight from an ad, aren’t available here. When someone taps the call button on your ad, Google sees a click. It can’t see whether the call connected, how long it lasted or whether it was a real job.
The fix is third-party call tracking: tracking numbers on your ads and website that ring through to your phone and report each call back to Google Ads. We set it up for clients who want it. We explain the options in more detail in how to choose a Google Ads agency (question 5).
If your own count matches Google’s, and both are low, the leak is real. Keep going.
2. What are people actually searching?
Your keywords are what you asked Google to show your ad for. The search terms report is what people actually typed. They’re often very different.
In Google Ads, open Insights and reports, then Search terms, and look at the last 30 to 90 days, sorted by cost. You’re looking for clicks you’d never want:
- Job seekers. “Plumber jobs”, “builders wanted”, “apprenticeship”. These are the biggest leak in trade accounts. We found it in our own account: our building work guide has the numbers.
- DIY and research. “How to fix a leaking tap”, “how much does a heat pump cost to run”. Some are worth having, most aren’t.
- Wrong services or places. A suburb you don’t cover, a job you don’t do, a brand you don’t install.
- Other businesses’ names. If you’re paying for searches of a competitor’s name, decide whether you mean to.
If more than a handful of the expensive terms are junk, you’ve found a leak. The next check is how to stop it.
3. Are your match types and negatives keeping the junk out?
Two settings decide how far Google strays from your keywords.
Match types. Broad match lets Google show your ad for anything it judges related, and for a local trade business that’s usually too generous. Phrase and exact match keep your ads to searches that contain your words or mean the same thing. When a trade account is leaking money on irrelevant searches, broad match is the first place we look.
Negative keywords. These tell Google which searches to never show for. A trade business should start with a list on day one: jobs, hiring, wanted, apprentice, salary, course, DIY, how to, plus phrases like “electrician job” (blocking “job” on its own can hide “small job” customers, and blocking “free” hides people after a free quote). Then add to it every week for the first month, straight from the search terms report, and monthly after that. Our Google Ads cost guide covers the other places budgets leak.
4. Where are the clicks coming from?
Even with perfect keywords, the wrong people can click. Three settings to check under your campaign’s settings:
- Location: presence, not interest. Google’s default location option is “Presence or interest”, which Google describes as reaching people “in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations”. The other option, “Presence”, reaches only people “in or regularly in” your area. For a tradie who has to turn up at the house, presence is usually the right choice. We also exclude every country except New Zealand, which cuts out a lot of overseas and VPN clicks.
- Networks. Search campaigns can also show on Google’s search partner sites and, in some setups, the Display Network. For trade businesses we switch both off and keep the ads on Google Search itself.
- Invalid clicks. Google filters out most clicks it judges invalid and doesn’t charge you for them. You can add the “Invalid clicks” column to your campaign view to see how many it’s catching. A sudden spike is worth asking about.
5. When are your ads showing?
If your ads run at 9pm and nobody answers the phone at 9pm, those clicks are paying for a voicemail. Check the ad schedule against the hours you can actually take a call.
That doesn’t mean you have to switch the ads off at night. Plenty of planned work gets researched after dinner. But if your ads run after hours, have a plan for those calls: we cover the options in after-hours calls when you don’t do emergency work.
6. What happens after the click?
Now the page. Pull your phone out and click your own ad (search for it, don’t type the address in). Then be the customer:
- Is the phone number at the top, and does tapping it start a call? On a phone, your number should be the first thing they can tap, not buried in the footer.
- Does the page match the search? Someone who searched “hot water cylinder replacement” and lands on your homepage has to go looking. Each main service deserves its own page, and the ad should point to it.
- Does it load fast on mobile data? Not on the office wifi. On a phone, outside, on one bar.
- Would you trust it? Reviews, your licence or registration, real photos of your work, your name. A page that could belong to anyone gets treated like it does.
- Is the form short? Name, phone, what the job is, suburb. Every extra field costs you enquiries.
If you’d hesitate to ring yourself from that page, so do your customers.
7. Does anyone answer, and how fast?
This is the check most accounts never get to, because it isn’t in Google Ads at all. A click that turns into a call that rings out, or a form that sits unanswered until tomorrow night, looks exactly like “clicks but no calls” from the outside.
Two things to check:
- Calls during the day. If you’re on the tools and the person in the office is already on the other line, the caller hears a busy line or voicemail and rings the next name on the page. Our guide on who answers the phone when you’re on the tools covers the options, from a better voicemail to an AI receptionist.
- Web enquiries. How long does a form enquiry wait for a reply? The first business to reply usually gets the job. An automatic email reply straight away, then a follow-up that doesn’t rely on your memory, closes most of this gap. Do you actually follow up your leads? walks through checking yours.
8. Is the budget big enough to learn anything?
The last check is the one people want to start with. A campaign needs enough clicks to tell you anything. At $10 a day in a main centre, you might buy two or three clicks a day, and a month of that tells you very little. The Is $10 or $20 a day enough? section of our cost guide works through the maths by trade.
If the budget is small, don’t spread it. One campaign, your best service, your best area, until it’s producing enquiries. Then add the next one.
The 20-minute checklist
| Check | Where to look | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Real enquiries vs Google’s count | Your phone log and inbox vs the Conversions column | Numbers roughly agree, or you know why they don’t |
| Search terms | Insights and reports, then Search terms | Few expensive junk searches |
| Match types and negatives | Keywords, then Negative keywords | Phrase or exact match, a starting negative list, reviewed weekly at first |
| Location option | Campaign settings, Locations | Presence, other countries excluded |
| Networks | Campaign settings, Networks | Search partners and Display off |
| Ad schedule | Campaign settings, Ad schedule | Matches when calls get answered, or there’s an after-hours plan |
| Landing page | Your own phone, from your own ad | Tappable number at the top, the right service page, fast, trustworthy |
| Reply speed | Your inbox and missed calls | Every enquiry gets a reply the same day, ideally straight away |
When it isn’t the ads
Sometimes every check comes back clean and the phone is still quiet. Then the issue is usually upstream of the ads: a price that’s out of step with the area, a service people aren’t searching for yet, or a season (nobody’s searching for heat pump installs in the first week of summer). The ads can only bring people to you. They can’t change what they find when they get there.
How we run trade accounts
For what it’s worth, this is how we set up the Google Ads we run for trade businesses: phrase and exact match keywords, a negative keyword list from day one, presence-only location targeting with every other country excluded, search partners and Display off, the search terms reviewed weekly in the first month, and third-party call tracking for clients who want calls counted properly. Then we check the page and the reply speed, because the best ads in the country can’t fix a call nobody answers. More on how we run Google Ads.
Google Ads clicks but no calls: FAQ
Why am I not getting calls from my Google Ads?
Usually a mix of three things: the wrong searches triggering your ads (check the search terms report), a landing page that makes calling hard on a phone, and calls or enquiries that don’t get answered quickly. In New Zealand, check your tracking first too: Google can’t record calls made straight from your ads here, so you may be getting more calls than the report shows.
Why am I getting clicks but no conversions?
Either the clicks aren’t from customers (search terms, location and network settings), or they are and something stops them enquiring (the page, the offer, the speed), or they do enquire and Google isn’t counting it (tracking). Work through them in that order.
What’s the difference between a click to call and a call from an ad?
A click to call is someone tapping the call button on your ad. Google counts that as a click. A call from an ad, with its length and whether it connected, can only be recorded with Google’s forwarding numbers, which aren’t available in New Zealand. That’s why NZ businesses use third-party call tracking to see which ads made the phone ring.
How do I stop fake clicks on Google Ads?
Google filters most invalid clicks and doesn’t charge you for them; add the “Invalid clicks” column to see how many. On your side, set location targeting to presence, exclude countries you don’t serve, keep the ads off search partners and Display, and watch the search terms report for anything odd.
How long before Google Ads should bring in calls?
A well-built trade campaign usually produces enquiries within the first few weeks, though it takes longer to tune. If you’ve had a month of steady clicks and nothing at all, don’t wait it out: run the checks above.
Want someone to run these checks on your account? Get a free leads audit: 20 minutes with the people who run the ads, no obligation.