When Google Ads shows clicks and no conversions, check the conversion tag before anything else, because every other diagnosis depends on the conversion count being right. Once tracking is confirmed, the ranked causes are a slow mobile page, a gap between the ad's promise and the page, search traffic sent to a homepage, and clicks from people researching rather than buying.
The four questions and five causes below are the same playbook the free campaign troubleshooter runs. Here each cause also names the PaidSync tool that checks it in your own account and the change you can preview before anything is applied.
Answer yes or no to each. Every cause below says which answer points to it.
Points here when you answer No to question 1.
Run the full path yourself with Google Tag Assistant: click an ad, complete the conversion, and confirm the conversion tag fires on the confirmation page. Then check the conversion action's status in Goals, Conversions. Google shows Awaiting conversions when nothing was recorded in the last 7 days and Misconfigured when a setup error or a broken tag stopped recording. Rule this out first, because every other diagnosis depends on the conversion count.
get_conversion_tracking_status, list_conversion_actions, audit_gtm_container
Ask your assistant: “Check conversion tracking on my Google Ads account. Is any campaign spending with zero conversions, and does my Tag Manager container have a Google Ads conversion tag and a conversion linker?”
create_conversion_action returns the conversion action it would create while dry_run is on. setup_google_ads_conversion builds the tag, trigger and conversion linker in a new Tag Manager workspace. It has no dry run, but nothing goes live until that workspace is published.
Points here when you answer No to question 2.
Run the landing page through PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) on mobile. Google's Core Web Vitals guidance is a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less for at least 75 percent of page loads. If the page misses it, compress the hero image, defer third-party scripts such as chat widgets, and remove redirects between the ad click and the page.
get_quality_score_report
Ask your assistant: “Show the landing page experience rating for my top keywords by cost over the last 30 days.”
Page speed is fixed on the website, not in Google Ads, so there is no Google Ads change to preview. PageSpeed Insights measures the page itself; get_quality_score_report shows whether Google rates the landing page experience below average.
Points here when you answer No to question 3.
The ad made one promise and the page leads with another. Rewrite the landing page H1 to carry the ad headline's promise, then run the old and new page against each other as a Google Ads experiment and judge on conversion rate.
get_quality_score_report, get_ad_performance
Ask your assistant: “Which keywords rate below average on ad relevance or landing page experience, and which ads do they trigger?”
create_experiment sets up the old page against the new one as a campaign experiment. It defaults to dry_run, so the first call shows the experiment it would create.
Points here when you answer Yes to question 4.
Build a landing page for each major ad group, with one offer and one call to action that match the keywords in that group. A homepage speaks to every visitor at once and carries many competing links. Test the dedicated page against the homepage as an experiment before moving all traffic to it.
run_gaql_query, get_keyword_performance
Ask your assistant: “Using Google's landing page view report, group the last 30 days of clicks and conversions by landing page, and flag ad groups that send traffic to the homepage.”
create_experiment runs a dedicated landing page against the homepage as a campaign experiment. It defaults to dry_run, so the first call shows what it would create.
Points here when the causes above are ruled out, with answers Yes to question 1, Yes to question 2, Yes to question 3, No to question 4.
Open the search terms report. If the queries that bring clicks are informational (how to, what is) rather than commercial (buy, hire, near me), the people clicking are researching, not buying. Add the informational patterns as negative keywords and keep the commercial ones.
get_search_terms_report, analyze_search_term_ngrams
Ask your assistant: “Find search terms and repeated word patterns that cost money in the last 30 days and never converted.”
add_negative_keywords defaults to dry_run and returns the negatives it would add and where, before a second call applies them.
In the PaidSync workspace, by default, every write is approval-gated: it is held as a card before it runs, and an applied card gets a one-tap undo. On every path, Google Ads creates and most other creates are previewed with dry_run, destructive operations need confirm_destructive, and applied changes are logged, on a best-effort basis, with a 7-day before-and-after outcome. When your own assistant calls PaidSync over MCP, no card is written, so whether a person confirms first is set in your assistant.
The full model, including what is not built yet, is on the security page.
Run this check in Claude, Claude Code, Cursor or ChatGPT. Connect Google Ads once, then paste any of the questions above to your assistant.
Not sure which symptom fits? The free Google Ads audit tool scores wasted spend, structure, Quality Score and Performance Max, and the campaign troubleshooter runs its playbooks without an account.
Start with measurement. The conversion tag may not fire on the confirmation page, or the action may not be the one your campaigns report on. Google shows a conversion action as Awaiting conversions when it recorded nothing in the last 7 days and Misconfigured when a setup error or broken tag stopped recording. Once tracking is confirmed, look at mobile page speed, the match between ad and page, and the intent behind the search terms.
Open Google Tag Assistant, go to your landing page, and complete a real conversion. The conversion tag should fire on the confirmation page or on the form's success event. Then check the conversion action's status in Goals, Conversions.
Google's Core Web Vitals guidance is a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads, on mobile and desktop separately. PageSpeed Insights reports it for any URL.
For Search, a landing page per major ad group can carry the ad's promise, one offer and one call to action, where a homepage speaks to every visitor at once. Test it as an experiment rather than assuming the result.
In the PaidSync workspace, by default, every write is approval-gated: it is held as a card before it runs, and an applied card gets a one-tap undo. On every path, Google Ads creates and most other creates are previewed with dry_run, destructive operations need confirm_destructive, and applied changes are logged, on a best-effort basis, with a 7-day before-and-after outcome. When your own assistant calls PaidSync over MCP, no card is written, so whether a person confirms first is set in your assistant.