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Key Takeaways
A spammy lead loop occurs when Google Ads serves low-quality or fake leads repeatedly, draining your budget.
You can break the loop by switching bid strategies, optimizing ad targeting, and excluding bad conversions.
Gathering and feeding Google high-quality data is critical to resetting your campaigns for success.
Quick Links
What Is a Spammy Lead Loop?
Why Spammy Lead Loops Happen
5 Steps to Escape a Spammy Lead Loop
Best Practices to Avoid Future Spammy Lead Loops
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What Is a Spammy Lead Loop?
A spammy lead loop happens when your Google Ads campaigns repeatedly attract low-quality or fake leads.
Unlike general performance issues like low click-through rates or poor ad relevance, spammy lead loops specifically involve Google’s algorithm optimizing for bad data.
This creates a cycle where the system continually drives irrelevant traffic, making it difficult to achieve meaningful results. While your conversion numbers might look promising, they often don’t translate into actual business growth. This leads to wasted ad spend and frustration.
For example, if you’ve noticed a sudden spike in conversions but no corresponding revenue increase, you might be stuck in a spammy lead loop. Other signs include a high volume of irrelevant leads or rapid budget depletion without meaningful results.
Why Spammy Lead Loops Happen
The issue often stems from the data Google’s algorithms rely on.
For example, if your campaign records a few low-quality or fake leads as conversions, Google’s system interprets these as valuable actions. This prompts the algorithm to optimize for more leads of the same type, perpetuating the cycle of bad data and poor results.
Many campaigns use automated bid strategies like “Maximize Conversions” that depend on historical conversion data.
If your campaign receives just a few bad leads, the algorithm may interpret these as successful conversions and optimize for more of the same. Other contributing factors include poor campaign setup, overly broad keywords, or misaligned ad copy and landing pages.
5 Steps to Escape a Spammy Lead Loop
1. Change Your Bid Strategy
The first step is to move away from automated bidding strategies like “Maximize Conversions.”
Instead, use “Manual CPC” or “Maximize Clicks” temporarily. This shift tells Google to focus on driving traffic based on your keywords rather than relying on problematic conversion data.
By regaining control over your bids, you can steer your campaign in the right direction.
2. Optimize Ad Targeting
Evaluate your ad targeting and clean up your campaigns. Here’s how:
Audit Keywords: Avoid broad match keywords that give Google too much freedom. Switch to phrase or exact match keywords.
Review Search Terms: Regularly comb through the search terms report to identify irrelevant queries and add them to your negative keyword list.
Align Ad Copy and Landing Pages: Ensure your messaging and offer are clear and highly relevant to your audience.
3. Exclude Bad Conversions
Take advantage of Google’s conversion exclusion feature. This allows you to identify and remove bad conversion data from specific timeframes. For example, if all leads from January 1-15 were spam, exclude that data to prevent it from influencing your campaign’s optimization.
4. Gather Quality Data
Now that your campaign is cleaned up, focus on accumulating high-quality conversion data. Track leads closely and wait until you’ve collected 20-30 solid leads.
This provides Google with a clean dataset to optimize for better results.
5. Return to Max Conversions
Once you have enough high-quality leads, switch back to a “Maximize Conversions” strategy.
This bid strategy is usually more cost-efficient for driving leads, provided the data Google is optimizing from is accurate and relevant.
Monitor results closely, and if spammy leads return, revert to manual bidding strategies temporarily.
Best Practices to Avoid Future Spammy Lead Loops
Regularly Audit Campaigns
Stay on top of your campaign’s performance by reviewing keywords, search terms, and conversion data frequently. Regular maintenance helps catch issues early before they escalate.
Refine Geographic and Demographic Filters
Use geographic filters to ensure your ads target the right regions. For example, if you’re a local service provider, set your campaign to target specific cities or ZIP codes where you operate.
Additionally, adjust the settings to show ads only to people physically in those locations, not just those interested in them. This helps focus your budget on the most relevant audience and reduces wasted spend.
Demographic filters can help you exclude irrelevant audiences, such as job seekers, if they’re not part of your target market.
Use Accurate Conversion Tracking
Set up conversion tracking that aligns with your business goals. Focus on core actions like form submissions and calls, and avoid using metrics like page views as primary conversions.
Tools like CallRail can help you send only high-quality offline conversions back into Google Ads.
CallRail integrates by allowing you to track and review phone calls generated through your ads. You can mark calls as qualified leads, and the system automatically uploads these as conversions to your Google Ads account. This ensures Google optimizes for meaningful interactions rather than irrelevant calls.
Maintain Negative Keyword Lists
Consistently update your negative keyword list to block irrelevant traffic. The Search Terms Report is your best friend when it comes to keyword negation.
Use this report in Google Ads to discover what search queries are leading to clicks on your ads. Setting up shared negative keyword lists across campaigns in Google Ads can also save time and ensure consistency.
Common examples include excluding terms like “free” or “login” if they’re not relevant to your offers.
Breaking out of a spammy lead loop takes time and attention, but it’s entirely possible. By following these steps and maintaining a proactive approach, you can regain control of your campaigns and ensure they’re driving meaningful results for your business.
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