5 Google Ads Tactics to Stop Using in 2026

Google Ads changes constantly. Strategies that were considered best practice two or three years ago can actually hurt your performance today. We manage a lot of accounts, and we see the same outdated tactics popping up again and again, usually because someone followed a YouTube tutorial from 2022.

Here are five things that need to stop if you want your Google Ads account to perform well in 2026.

1. Are you still using broad match without guardrails?

Broad match keywords have come a long way. Google's AI is significantly better at understanding intent than it was a few years ago. But that doesn't mean you should set every keyword to broad match and walk away.

We still see accounts where broad match keywords are burning through budget on completely irrelevant searches. A broad match keyword like "electrician" can trigger your ad for "electrician salary," "how to become an electrician," or "electrician jobs near me." None of those people want to hire you.

Here's the thing. Broad match can work, but only when paired with strong conversion data and a solid negative keyword list. If your account has fewer than 30 conversions per month, broad match simply doesn't have enough signal to be smart about matching. Stick with phrase match for your core keywords and only test broad match on your highest-volume terms once you have the data to support it.

When we took over G-TEC Electrical's account, one of the first things we did was pull back broad match keywords that were haemorrhaging budget on unrelated searches. That clean-up alone made a noticeable difference in their cost per lead within the first couple of weeks.

2. Why are you still ignoring your negative keyword list?

I've talked about negative keywords before, but it bears repeating because it's genuinely the most neglected part of most small business accounts. If you haven't checked your Search Terms report in the last month, open it right now. I'll wait.

The searches triggering your ads will shock you. We've seen pest control ads showing for "pest control jobs hiring," roofing ads triggered by "roofing materials wholesale," and dental ads appearing for "dental school admissions." Every one of those clicks costs money and generates zero leads.

Your negative keyword list should be a living document. Add to it weekly for the first three months, then at least monthly after that. If you're not doing this, you're essentially handing Google permission to spend your money on whatever it feels like.

3. Are you still using outdated bidding strategies?

Manual CPC bidding used to be the go-to recommendation. And for brand new accounts with no conversion data, it still has its place. But if your account has been running for more than 90 days and you're still manually setting bids on every keyword, you're working harder than you need to and probably getting worse results.

Google's automated bidding has improved dramatically. Target CPA and Maximise Conversions, when fed enough data, consistently outperform manual bidding in the accounts we manage. The machine can process signals like device, location, time of day, and search intent in ways that a human simply can't match at scale.

The mistake people make is switching to automated bidding too early, before they have 30-50 conversions in a 30-day window. That's the threshold where the algorithm has enough data to work with. If you switch before that, you're giving a learner driver the keys to a sports car. Be patient, build the data with manual or enhanced CPC first, then let automation take over.

4. Why aren't you tracking phone calls properly?

This one drives me up the wall. If you're a service business, a huge percentage of your leads come in via phone calls. Yet so many accounts either don't track calls at all, or they're only tracking the click on a call extension, which tells you someone tapped a phone number but not whether the call actually connected or lasted more than five seconds.

Proper call tracking means using a dynamic number insertion system that swaps your phone number on the website based on how the visitor arrived. When someone from Google Ads calls that number, the call is recorded and attributed back to the specific keyword, ad, and campaign that generated it.

Without this, your conversion data is incomplete. Google's algorithm can't optimise towards calls it doesn't know about. And you can't calculate your true cost per lead because half your leads are invisible.

We set up call tracking on every account we manage. It's not optional. The difference it makes in data quality and optimisation capability is enormous. If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: set up proper call tracking.

5. Are single keyword ad groups still worth the effort?

Single keyword ad groups, or SKAGs, were the darling of Google Ads strategy around 2018-2020. The idea was to create one ad group for each keyword, giving you complete control over which ad shows for which search. In theory, this maximises relevance and Quality Score.

In practice, for small businesses with limited budgets, SKAGs create more problems than they solve. You end up with dozens or hundreds of ad groups, each with tiny amounts of data. It becomes a nightmare to manage, and the performance difference compared to well-organised themed ad groups is marginal at best.

Google's responsive search ads have also made SKAGs less relevant. With RSAs, Google is already testing different headline and description combinations for each search query. The granular control that SKAGs provided is now partially handled by the ad format itself.

For small budgets under $5,000 a month, we recommend themed ad groups with 5-10 tightly related keywords each. You get the relevance benefits without the management overhead. Save your time for the things that actually move the needle, like writing better ads and building better landing pages.

Out of curiosity, how many of these five mistakes did you recognise in your own account? If it's more than two, your campaigns are almost certainly leaving money on the table. The good news is that every one of these issues is fixable, most of them within a day or two of focused work.