Google Ads Stopped Working? 7 Critical Fixes (2025 Guide)

Your Google ads stopped working overnight, and you’re watching your revenue flatline while competitors steal your market share. If your previously successful campaigns suddenly have zero impressions or drastically reduced traffic, you’re not alone—analysis of over 17,000 campaigns from WordStream(1) reveals that performance fluctuations affect the vast majority of advertisers at some point.

The good news? Most campaign traffic issues stem from seven common settings that can be diagnosed and fixed within hours, not days. Whether you’re dealing with disappearing impressions, plummeting click-through rates, or complete ad serving problems, this diagnostic guide will help you identify the root cause and restore your campaign performance quickly.

Why Do Google Ads Campaigns Suddenly Stop Getting Traffic?

Google ads campaigns stop working due to hidden settings changes, bidding strategy errors, or quality issues that restrict ad serving. The most common issues include search partner networks delivering poor traffic, unrealistic bidding targets, and conversion tracking problems that confuse automated systems.

Campaign performance drops rarely happen without a trigger. Algorithm updates, automatic optimization features, and default settings that seem helpful often create the opposite effect. Understanding these patterns helps you diagnose issues faster and prevent future traffic loss.

The 7 Critical Settings Audit: Emergency Diagnostic Checklist

1. Search Partners Network: The Hidden Traffic Quality Killer

Search partners are external websites that show your ads, often delivering low-quality traffic that wastes your budget. Check this setting first—it’s enabled by default and frequently causes mysterious performance drops.

Navigate to your campaign settings and look for the “Search Network” section. If “Include Google search partners” is checked, you’ve likely found your problem. This setting allows your ads to appear on non-Google sites that often generate clicks from bots, accidental clicks, or users with no purchase intent.

Warning signs include:

• Very low cost-per-clicks (suspiciously cheap)
• High click volumes with poor conversion rates
• Strange search terms that don’t match your keywords
• Traffic from unusual geographic locations

The fix: Uncheck the search partners box immediately. This single change can improve your campaign ROI by 40-60% within 24 hours.

2. Conversion Tracking: When “Fake” Conversions Destroy Performance

Tracking meaningless actions like “time on site” or “page views” as conversions confuses Google’s automated bidding and reduces traffic quality. These fake conversion signals train the algorithm to optimize for worthless interactions instead of actual business results.

Review your conversion actions in the “Goals” section of your account. Look for conversions that don’t represent real business value—common culprits include newsletter signups with no purchase intent, PDF downloads, or engagement metrics like pages per session.

The impact on traffic: When Google’s algorithm thinks a 2-minute site visit equals a sale, it targets users who browse but never buy, gradually reducing your impression share on high-intent keywords.

The solution: Remove non-valuable conversion actions and keep only purchase completions, qualified leads, or other actions that directly correlate with revenue.

3. Target CPA Bidding: The Campaign Killer When Set Too Aggressively

Setting target CPA too low compared to your historical costs will starve your campaigns of traffic within days. If you typically pay $100 per conversion and set a $30 target, Google’s algorithm will drastically reduce bids to meet an impossible goal.

Check your bidding strategy settings and compare your target CPA to actual conversion costs from the past 90 days. Many advertisers make this mistake after hearing they should “optimize for lower costs” without understanding the traffic implications.

Recovery strategy: If your campaign stopped working after switching to target CPA, immediately increase your target to 120% of your historical average. This gives the algorithm room to find traffic while still optimizing for efficiency. You can gradually lower the target once traffic stabilizes.

4. Competitor Keyword Targeting: Budget Drain That Limits Profitable Traffic

Bidding on competitor brand names typically generates unqualified traffic and drains budget from keywords that actually convert. While this strategy seems smart, it rarely produces positive ROI and can reduce your impression share on valuable terms.

Audit your keyword lists for competitor company names, product names, or branded terms. These keywords often have high costs and low conversion rates because users searching for specific brands usually aren’t comparison shopping.

Hidden impact: Budget spent on competitor terms reduces your ability to bid competitively on high-intent keywords where you actually have a chance to convert traffic profitably.

The fix: Pause competitor keyword campaigns and redirect that budget toward your proven converting terms or product-focused keywords.

5. Search vs Shopping Campaign Priority (E-commerce)

For e-commerce businesses, over-investing in search campaigns instead of Google Shopping typically results in higher costs and lower traffic volume. Shopping campaigns generally offer better cost efficiency and conversion rates for product-based businesses.

Compare your search and shopping campaign performance over the past 30 days. Look at cost-per-click, conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS). Most e-commerce businesses find shopping campaigns deliver 30-50% lower CPCs with comparable or better conversion rates.

Budget reallocation strategy: Shift 70% of your product advertising budget to Shopping campaigns and maintain 30% for search campaigns targeting informational or comparison keywords.

6. Target ROAS: When E-commerce Goals Become Traffic Restrictive

Setting target ROAS too high forces Google to avoid bidding on profitable keywords that don’t meet unrealistic efficiency goals. If you historically achieve 300% ROAS and set a 500% target, your campaigns will receive minimal traffic.

Review your target ROAS settings against historical performance data. E-commerce businesses often fall into this trap when trying to improve profitability without understanding the traffic trade-offs.

Quick fix: Lower your target ROAS to 80% of your historical average, monitor performance for one week, then gradually increase once traffic volume stabilizes.

7. Performance Max Campaigns (B2B and Technical Industries)

Performance Max campaigns often generate spam leads for B2B and technical companies because Google’s automation can’t distinguish between qualified and unqualified traffic in complex industries. While these campaigns promise easy conversions, the lead quality is frequently poor.

If you’re in a technical, B2B, or niche industry and recently launched Performance Max, check your lead quality carefully. Look for generic contact form submissions, international inquiries (if you serve local markets), or leads that don’t match your ideal customer profile.

B2B-specific solution: Pause Performance Max campaigns and create targeted search campaigns with carefully curated keywords and geographic targeting. This approach requires more setup but delivers significantly better lead quality.

Advanced Troubleshooting: Beyond the Critical 7

Sometimes campaign issues extend beyond these common settings. Check your daily budget limits—if you’re consistently hitting budget caps, you’re likely losing impression share during peak traffic hours. Review your geographic targeting to ensure you haven’t accidentally excluded profitable markets.

Quality score issues can also limit ad serving. Low-quality landing pages, irrelevant ad copy, or poor keyword-to-ad relevance can reduce your campaign reach even with adequate budgets and bidding strategies.

Step-by-Step Recovery Process

Start with the search partners check—this takes 30 seconds and often provides immediate relief. Next, audit your conversion tracking and bidding strategies, as these require 24-48 hours to show impact after changes.

Monitor your campaigns daily during recovery, watching for impression share improvements and traffic quality indicators. Avoid making multiple changes simultaneously, as this makes it difficult to identify which fixes actually restored performance.

Preventing Future Traffic Issues

Set up automated alerts for significant traffic drops using Google Ads’ built-in notification system. Weekly performance reviews help catch issues before they severely impact your results.

Create a monthly audit checklist covering these seven critical areas. Prevention is always easier and less costly than recovery, especially for businesses that depend heavily on paid advertising for lead generation or sales.

When to Seek Professional Help

If you’ve checked all seven settings and still experience traffic issues, you may have account-level problems requiring expert intervention. Complex campaign structures, policy violations, or technical implementation issues sometimes need professional diagnosis.

Consider professional ppc management if your campaigns generate significant revenue and these issues occur frequently. The cost of expert help is usually far less than the revenue lost during extended downtime periods.

Conclusion

When your Google ads stopped working, systematic diagnosis using this seven-point checklist will identify the root cause in most cases. Start with search partners and conversion tracking—these two settings alone cause the majority of mysterious traffic drops that frustrate advertisers.

Remember that campaign optimization requires ongoing attention, not set-and-forget management. Regular monitoring and preventive maintenance keep your advertising investment protected and your business growing consistently through paid search marketing.

Ready to fix your campaigns? Request a free 30-minute Google Ads audit and let our team review your account. At the end of the call, you can decide if you want to work with us or not—no pressure, just actionable insights to get your campaigns back to profitable performance.

Sources:

1. WordStream. (2024). Google Ads Benchmarks 2024: New Trends & Insights for Key Industries. Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2024-google-ads-benchmarks