Why Your Google Ad Campaign Is Generating Spam Leads

I've had a couple clients recently complaining about receiving SPAM leads from Google Ads. These are basically people submitting their websites web form with a solicitation message. Obviously, this is not what my clients want. They want real leads, which they are also receiving but they "don't want to be paying for ANY spam leads".

Is there anything you can do about them?

Unfortunately, if the spammer is performing a similar search as your potential customer like "blue widgets near me" to find you and spam your inbox, I'm afraid there's little one can do to eliminate these SPAM leads without also reducing the # of potential real leads they get.

If the spam you're receiving is from bots, you might want to look into using a service like ClickCease or ClickGuard.

If you're advertising on Google Search Partner Networks in addition to the Google.com Search Results, I find this tends to generate more SPAM leads for whatever reason. Not always, but it can be a potential source.

Also, if you're running Pmax campaigns for lead gen purposes this also can generate a lot of spam leads. I've only seen Pmax work well for ecommerce businesses where we're tracking sales conversions as the Primary Conversion.

Setting up offline conversion tracking can also help you to optimize your campaign to increase actual sales, which means you'd be getting fewer SPAM leads as a result. Also, with offline conversion tracking, you can then identify what your return on ad spend is on the campaign and if the campaign was generating a 5 to 1 return on ad spend or better, what's it matter if you get a few SPAM leads. It's simply a cost of doing business.

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