Your Google Ads are getting clicks but no enquiries. That might be normal.

If your Google Ads are getting clicks but no enquiries in the first weeks, that’s often how buying works, not a broken campaign.

Price and urgency will impact how long someone takes to get in touch, and between that first click and the call they’re comparing quotes and reading reviews.

Sometimes it is broken, though. This covers how long your customers take, what to judge Google Ads on, and what to check first if your Google Ads aren’t converting.

You don’t hire anyone on the first click

Think about the last time you chose a physio in Subiaco or an electrician for a switchboard upgrade. You probably clicked a couple of options, looked at a website, left, read some reviews, asked a friend and came back days later to book.

Google’s research on how people decide what to buy describes the stretch between noticing a need and buying as a loop. Exploring widens the options, evaluating narrows them, and people repeat the loop as many times as they need.

A typical search campaign turns a small minority of clicks into enquiries. WordStream’s 2026 benchmarks, drawn from 13,474 US search campaigns between April 2025 and March 2026, put the median search conversion rate at 8.18%. That’s about eight enquiries for every 100 clicks, and 92 people that didn’t enquire. A conversion in those figures is a lead, so the share that became paying customers is smaller again.

Rates swing by industry and offer, so we’ve set out what a good conversion rate looks like separately. In your first months of Google Ads, treat each click as someone starting a comparison.

Price and urgency set the clock

The more something costs and the less urgent it is, the longer people take between the first click and the enquiry. Google’s full report found some decisions need only a brief loop, and habitual or impulse buys can skip it altogether.

A burst pipe in Scarborough at 9pm gets a call in the same session, as does an air conditioner dying in a February heatwave, nobody collects three quotes with water coming through the ceiling.

An accountant sits in the middle, often chosen slowly until a deadline turns up. Anyone lodging their own tax return needs to lodge by 31 October, and anyone using a registered tax agent must engage one before then. An accountant’s October clicks can behave quite differently from February’s.

At the far end sit a kitchen renovation in Applecross, a pool or a solar system. People browse for a long time, collect several quotes and talk it over at home before anyone rings. B2B decisions, like an engineering firm choosing a supplier, often run slower again, because more people have to agree.

If you’re an emergency trade, clicks without calls are an early warning sign, because your customers ring in the same session they search. If you sell renovations, a quiet start is often the buying cycle at work. Work out where your business sits before you judge results.

Your website, quote and reviews do the closing

A click gets you onto the shortlist, what the buyer sees next decides whether they ring you.

In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 66% said they research further after reading a positive review. The most common next step (54%) is visiting the business’s website, and 68% will only use a business rated four stars or more.

An ad can’t fix a 3.8-star profile or a quote that turns up a week late. If you quote jobs worth more than a few thousand dollars, the quote is part of your marketing. How fast it arrives, how clear the inclusions are and whether anyone follows it up decide jobs the ad started. Google Ads, your Google Business Profile and your website all feed the same decision.

Judge it on sales, based on how long your buyers usually take to decide

Count enquiries that turned into sales, and give it as long as your buyers take to decide.

Google Ads conversions are whatever actions you’ve set it up to track: form submissions, calls, taps on a button. A sale happens later, somewhere Google can’t see unless you tell it. Even the enquiry count can run low, for example through consent settings that undercounts conversions. Keep a simple lead-to-sale record in a CRM or spreadsheet: the date, the source, whether you quoted, whether you won and the job’s value.

That record can also go back into the account. With enhanced conversions for leads, you send Google Ads the leads that became customers, so it learns from sales as well as form fills. If you already use a CRM, connect it. CRM linking is one of the set-ups we do on Google Ads accounts.

By default, Google Ads records a conversion within 30 days of the ad click. That’s the conversion window, and you can set it anywhere from 1 to 90 days. Google says the setting suits businesses whose buying cycle doesn’t fit the default 30 days, and anything outside the window isn’t recorded. If someone clicks your ad and enquires six weeks later without clicking again, a 30-day window never records that enquiry.

If your buyers routinely take longer than a month, check your Google Ads conversion window before you judge anything. To see how long they take, the Path metrics report in Google Ads shows how many days and ad interactions come before a conversion. Google notes it only reflects the keywords and ads in your account, so real journeys are often longer than it shows.

A small budget also makes one month a thin sample. Divide your monthly spend by your average cost per click to get your monthly clicks. At WordStream’s median, every 100 clicks is about eight enquiries, and only some become jobs. On a couple of thousand dollars a month, one month’s result can rest on a handful of sales, which swings around. Judge the run of results over the window your buyers need.

When it isn’t normal, start inside the account

If your buyers decide quickly and your Google Ads still aren’t generating leads, the buying cycle isn’t the explanation. The same goes for clicks from the wrong people. Look inside the account first if any of these sound familiar:

• you’re a same-day business with steady clicks and no calls
• enquiries are for work you don’t do, or areas you don’t service
• Google’s conversion numbers don’t match your phone log or inbox

Check that tracking counts real enquiries. A call only counts as a conversion if it lasts at least the minimum call length you set which defaults to 60 seconds. Google can only track the tap on a phone number on your mobile site, so a tap that never became a call can still count. Check that your form’s thank-you step fires and the enquiry email reaches a person. Then compare Google’s conversions with your inbox and call log for the same fortnight. Until they roughly match, you can’t judge anything on conversions.

Read the search terms. The search terms report shows the searches that triggered your ads. Anything irrelevant (free advice, jobs, DIY, courses, suburbs you don’t service) should become a negative keyword. On accounts we manage, the specialist runs weekly health checks and regularly audits the search terms.

Check who you’re reaching. By default, Google’s location targeting includes people in your target area and people who’ve shown interest in it. If you only service Perth metro, check that setting. Google offers a Presence option for businesses that only want to reach people in their target locations. Some businesses want the broader reach, so check before you change it.

Then fix what Google Ads can’t

Most of what decides whether a click becomes a job happens after the click.

Landing page. The page should keep the ad’s promise, load fast on mobile and make calling or requesting a quote obvious. Landing page quality constrains everything else in the account: if the page can’t convert, more traffic won’t help. We’ve set out how Google scores your landing page and what to fix first.

Speed of response. Harvard Business Review published an audit of 2,241 companies, each sent a test enquiry through its website. Of those, 37% replied within an hour and 23% never replied at all. Firms that tried within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to qualify the lead as firms that waited even an hour longer.

Decide who answers the phone when you’re on a job, set up a missed-call text-back, and time how long your quotes take to go out. If you’re a sole trader on the tools all day, a missed-call process will often do more than a bigger budget.

Reviews. Ask every happy customer and reply to every review. Recency counts too: BrightLocal found 74% of consumers look for reviews written in the last three months. Google’s Business Profile help says positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out. Keep them genuine, because fake reviews and made-up testimonials breach the Australian Consumer Law.

Remarketing. Google lets you show ads to past visitors as they do follow-up searches after leaving your site. That suits a buyer collecting three quotes, because you stay in front of them while they compare. Remarketing earns its keep for higher-price, low-urgency businesses with enough site traffic to build a list. An emergency plumber rarely needs it.

Frequently asked questions

Should I pause my Google Ads if there are no enquiries in the first fortnight?

That depends on how fast your customers decide. If they usually call the same day they search, look at your tracking and who’s answering the phone before you touch the budget. If they take longer, the first weeks mostly show you who’s clicking. Pausing stops new buyers entering the comparison, along with the data you’d need to judge it.

Why doesn’t Google Ads show the same number of enquiries we actually got?

Your inbox and phone hold enquiries from every channel, so they’ll usually run higher. Within Google Ads, enquiries go missing when they land outside the conversion window or when a call runs shorter than your minimum call length. The count can run the other way too, when taps on a phone number are counted as conversions without ever becoming calls.

Do Google Ads work for small businesses?

Yes, when people already search for what you sell in your area. Search doesn’t create demand, it captures demand that already exists, so if nobody types your service into Google, no budget will change that. Where the searches exist, whether Google Ads is worth it comes down to judging it on jobs won over your buying window.

Google Ads clicks but no enquiries in month one: what to do next

Check Google is counting real enquiries, work out how long your buyers take, then judge on enquiries that became sales over that window. If you’re still getting clicks but no enquiries after that, read the search terms. Then look after the click: the landing page, who answers the phone, how fast quotes go out and what your reviews say.

For a second opinion on Google Ads that aren’t converting, talk to our Google Ads team. A specialist will go through your account with you and tell you whether it’s the buying cycle or something that needs fixing.

Zac Fitzpatrick

PPC Service Lead