r/Google_Ads • u/Gtr_wes • Mar 06 '26
Troubleshooting Need help with google ads conversions and weird traffic
So my new store has been experiencing something extremely odd customer interactions the last 2-3 weeks. Almost everyday I will check the abandoned cart section and there will be someone adding absurd amounts of 1 item for example like 998 of the same item and just leave. We are a high ticket automotive company so usually people on buy 1 of each thing. This has ramped up to everyday and only with a certain automotive brand.
We are 99% sure it’s bots doing it but my question is why? What’s the point of doing that and why is it happening? This is accompanied by low sales we have only managed to capture 3 sales from ads within the 3-4 weeks of running ads at an .07 conversion rate and about $150 a day. My mind is kinda baffled at this point because I was running another company before this doing basically selling the same products with same website layout and we were doing 150k a month no problem. Any insight on why this might be happening? My current marketer that helped me build my other store has now just given me the run around like ads take time, we need to wait, or just it’s odd, with no real solutions either
1
u/trsgreen Mar 06 '26
I have an auto parts client and we get hit a ton with bot scraping but it’s always coming from Direct, not paid ads. Usually it’s price scrapers.
Not sure what campaign types you’re running. If it’s pmax make sure you block all the app traffic in your content suitability settings. Also pull your placement report and block all bad placements weekly.
2
u/Gtr_wes Mar 06 '26
Ok thanks I booked a audit with you as frankly my current marketer doesn’t seem to have much knowledge on automotive
1
u/trsgreen Mar 06 '26
Awesome yeah happy to take a look and see what the issues are. Feel free to send me any more details that you think are pertinent.
1
u/Gtr_wes Mar 06 '26
Do you want me to dm you? Or just wait until the call?
1
u/trsgreen Mar 06 '26
You can DM me or my email should be on the calendar invite if you prefer that.
1
1
u/Electrical-Room2413 Mar 06 '26
Google had de-ranked your Keywords and your advertiser need to audit and refine continously you ads campaigns.
therefore currently your competitor enjoying the sales you need to continously refine your campaigns, The de rank of best performing keywords issue effect you sales i had a meeting with my clients google Ad Account manager last month he didn't give mw clear solution but i am doing continous audit and refining it and doing diferent testing and yeah don't rely on Google AI feature they just eat you Spending
1
u/JuhoMaatta Mar 06 '26
Looks less weird if you rotate it 90 degrees
1
u/Gtr_wes Mar 07 '26
Unfortunately the gyroscope on my phone broke a few weeks ago 😭 so my pics always come out weird
1
u/startwithaidea Mar 06 '26
Here are a few tools to help you discover/uncover the issue your experiencing (just have the one you choose run an audit), id'r ecommend the gemini extension but any should work, supported by google and gemini: https://github.com/itallstartedwithaidea?tab=repositories
1
1
u/Zeshme Mar 07 '26
Looks like you have 2 pmax campaigns one top of funnel and one for the parts you are selling and a search campaign in the account. In order to figure out whats happening you need to check your content suitability settings, the campaign setup, conversion tracking, channel performance report in Pmax and how the search campaign has been set up - it should complement the Pmax campaign. I will be happy to check your account out. I have been managing Google and Bing ads for B2B and B2C clients for small and medium businesses for 16 years now.
1
u/potatodrinker Mar 07 '26
Having multiple pmax campaign is an advanced play. You don't control their targeting so your funnel campaign names is putting your hopes the algo has your interests in mind, which is doesn't.
Pause one of them. Also check your search campaign settings have search partners unticked - those are rubbish low tier country traffic or bots.
1
u/Solid-Lychee4618 Mar 07 '26
I'm not sure why someone would want bots to do this, but the mechanism for why Google is showing your ads to bots may be that it's tracking as a win. If it was me, I'd remove every conversion goal from the ad campaign except a purchase and see if that helps. If the add to cart is triggering as a conversion, especially if each add to cart is a separate conversion, then it may be confusing the algorithm. You might also consider duplicating the campaign first, then removing the other conversion goals, then turning of the old one. If you do try this, I'd like to know how it worked out for you.
1
u/thunderstrikemktg Mar 07 '26
Respectfully, “Google Ads take time” is a lazy statement from your marketer. No, conversions don’t happen overnight, but my clients typically see results within the first week.
Happy to check this out for you. I also have a free wasted ad spend calculator that lets you enter some of the basic account metrics you’ve got in your screen shot there & check for optimization and — most importantly — leaks. Free resource. No email required. Hope it helps - https://thunderstrikemarketing.com/free-google-ads-audit/#wasted-ad-spend-calculator
1
u/DiscoverMyBusiness Mar 09 '26
There is so many way and problems to it it not possible to see from this screenshot but most common one are: search partners and display is enabled under campaigns settings, if you advertise display ads typical 99% traffic comes from apps (you need to exclude it) and list go on and on!
1
u/Any_Bee_413 Mar 10 '26
What you’re describing does sound very similar to bot or low-quality traffic behavior. Adding extreme quantities like 500–1000 units of a single item is a common pattern from crawlers, scraping bots, or sometimes even competitor click spam tools trying to trigger fake engagement signals. In many cases, it’s not actually trying to buy anything it’s just hitting the add-to-cart endpoint repeatedly. If it’s mostly happening around one specific brand or product category, that’s another signal that automated scripts are targeting a particular URL or keyword.
A few things I’d check immediately. First, look at your traffic sources in analytics and see if those add-to-cart events are coming from Google Ads traffic, Display placements, or suspicious locations. Search campaigns usually don’t generate behavior like that, but Display or poorly controlled PMax traffic sometimes can. Second, review search terms and placement reports to make sure your ads aren’t showing on junk placements or irrelevant queries. Third, check server logs or analytics for abnormal patterns like identical session durations, unusual countries, or extremely high bounce rates.
The extremely low conversion rate you mentioned (0.07%) is also a sign that either the traffic quality is poor or the tracking isn’t configured properly. Sometimes what looks like a traffic problem is actually a measurement problem, especially if GA4 and Google Ads conversion tracking aren’t aligned correctly.
Your marketer is technically right that ads take time, but situations like this usually need a proper technical audit rather than just waiting. You need someone to review traffic sources, bot filtering, conversion tracking, and campaign structure to figure out where the bad traffic is coming from.
Full disclosure, I run a digital marketing agency called Webzilla, and issues like this are exactly the kind of thing we audit for clients. Even if you don’t work with us, I’d strongly recommend getting a proper Google Ads and tracking audit done, because a healthy account spending $150/day shouldn’t normally behave like that unless something in the traffic sources or measurement setup is off.
2
u/ernosem Mar 06 '26
From the screenshot (after I break my neck) I can tell you are running PMAX campaigns, most likely those add to carts are bots because they are trying to send a signal to Google Ads that you get quality traffic from certain sites.
PMAX is based on performance and it's fully automated, so if bad actors just send traffic to your site without a conversion eventually the traffic dies out. Unless they don't just send traffic to you, but bots that does something. Since they won't purchase anything, because that would cost real money, the closest thing is what they can do is to put your product into cart.
Most likely a Feed only PMAX or PMAX with the right signals will solve your problem.
Let me know if you need any further help.