The Google Ads settings most advertisers get wrong before the first click
Google Ads has hundreds of settings across accounts, campaigns, ad groups, and individual ads. Most of them have defaults that look reasonable but quietly work against your goals.
Understanding which settings matter, what each one actually does, and how they interact with each other is one of the clearest differences between wasting budget and delivering results.
What are Google Ads settings?
Google Ads settings are the configuration options that control how your campaigns run, who sees your ads, when they appear, how much you spend, and how performance is measured. They exist at every level of the account: the account level, the campaign level, the ad group level, and the individual ad level. Some settings apply globally, while others can be adjusted per campaign.
Getting settings right from the start matters more than most advertisers realize. A wrong bidding strategy, a misconfigured location setting, or an unchecked network expansion option can drain budget for weeks before the issue becomes obvious in the data. The good news is that most of the settings that cause problems are easy to fix once you know what to look for.
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How it works
Account-level settings apply to everything you run
Before any campaign goes live, the account itself needs to be configured correctly. This includes the account time zone, which affects when your ads show and how your reporting data lines up, the billing currency, conversion goals, and access permissions. These settings are set once but have a long-term impact on how the account is managed and how data is reported. A wrong time zone set on day one can make decisions unreliable.
Campaign settings tell how the campaign behaves
At the campaign level, you choose the campaign type, networks, locations, languages, bidding strategy, budget, and ad schedule. These settings define the boundaries within which the algorithm operates. A search campaign that accidentally includes the Display Network, for example, will route a portion of budget to banner placements that typically have far lower intent than search results.
Bidding settings have the most direct impact on cost
The bid strategy you choose tells Google how to optimize delivery. Options like Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and Target ROAS use machine learning to adjust bids in real time. Choosing the wrong strategy, or using a smart bidding strategy before the account has enough conversion data to guide it, often leads to high costs and inconsistent delivery. Most accounts need at least 30-50 conversions per month per campaign.
Location and audience settings tell who sees ads
Location targeting has two options that look similar but work very differently: Presence or Interest and Presence only. Presence only shows ads to people physically in your target location. Presence or Interest also shows ads to people who have shown interest in that location, which can include people browsing from outside your service area. For most local or regional businesses, Presence only is the correct choice and it is not the default.
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How to set up Google Ads correctly
A clean Google Ads setup is not complicated, but it does require going through settings deliberately rather than accepting defaults. The options that cause the most wasted spend are almost always enabled by default and need to be turned off manually.
Set the time zone and currency correctly before anything else
The account time zone cannot be changed after setup. It affects when your ads are scheduled, how dayparting reports line up with your actual business hours, and when billing periods reset. Set it to the time zone where your business operates, not where your billing address is. The same applies to currency. Changing these later requires a new account.
What matters in practice:
Select your operating time zone during account creation, before adding any payment or campaign details
If you are managing campaigns across multiple time zones, create separate accounts per region
Confirm time zone and currency are correct in account settings before any campaign goes live
Turn off Search Partners and Display Network for campaigns
By default, new search campaigns are opted into both Google Search Partners and the Display Network. Search Partners extends your ads to third-party sites that use Google Search. The Display Network shows your text ads as banners on websites across the internet. Both can dilute your budget and make performance data harder to read. Keeping search campaigns limited to Google Search only gives you cleaner data and better control.
What matters in practice:
Uncheck "Search Partners" & "Display Network" in the Networks section of campaign settings before launching
If you want to test Search Partners later, run it as a separate campaign so performance can be evaluated independently
Display advertising should always run in its own dedicated campaign, never as an add-on to a search campaign
Set location targeting to Presence only
Google defaults to "Presence or interest" for location targeting, which shows your ads to people outside your target area who have searched for or shown interest in it. For most businesses this means paying for clicks from users who cannot actually become customers. Switching to "Presence only" is a single dropdown change inside campaign settings that immediately tightens delivery to your actual service area.
What matters in practice:
Go to Campaign Settings, then Locations, then click the advanced search option to find the "Location options" dropdown
Select "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations" rather than the default
Review your location report after the first two weeks to see if any regions are spending heavily without converting
Configure conversion tracking before any campaign goes live
No Google Ads campaign should run without conversion tracking in place. Without it, the algorithm has no signal to optimize toward, smart bidding strategies have nothing to learn from, and you have no way of knowing which keywords, ads, or targeting options are generating real results. Setting up conversion tracking means defining what counts as a conversion, whether a form submission, a phone call, a purchase, or a page visit, and installing the right tags or using Google Tag Manager to record those events.
What matters in practice:
Set up at least one primary conversion action before the campaign launches, ideally a form submission or purchase
Use Google Tag Manager to manage tracking code rather than hardcoding tags directly into the site
Mark high-value conversion actions as Primary and lower-value ones as Secondary so smart bidding optimizes
Review your bid strategy based on account data, not goals
Choosing a bid strategy that matches your stated campaign goal sounds logical, but it only works if the account has enough data to support it. A new account with no conversion history running Target CPA bidding will struggle because the algorithm has nothing to learn from. Start with Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions without a target, build up conversion volume, then shift to Target CPA or Target ROAS once the account has thirty or more conversions per campaign per month.
What matters in practice:
Use Maximize Conversions with no target CPA on new campaigns until you have at least 30 conversions recorded
Once you have conversion data, set an initial Target CPA slightly above your current average cost per conversion
Review bid strategy performance after each full billing cycle and adjust targets based on actual data, not initial estimates
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Frequently asked questions
Google Ads settings are the configuration options that control how your campaigns run, who sees your ads, what triggers them, how much you bid, and how results are tracked. They exist at the account, campaign, and ad group level. Settings matter because the defaults Google provides are not always aligned with performance goals. Small setting mistakes, like leaving Display Network enabled on a search campaign or using the wrong location targeting option, can waste significant budget before showing up clearly in reports.
Before any campaign goes live you should have conversion tracking configured, the correct time zone and billing currency confirmed, campaign networks restricted to Google Search only for search campaigns, location targeting set to Presence only, and a bid strategy matched to your current level of conversion data. Skipping any of these steps usually means spending budget without the ability to optimize it, or worse, spending it on the wrong audience entirely.
Presence only shows your ads to people who are physically located in your target area. Presence or interest also shows ads to people who have searched for or shown interest in your target location, even if they are physically elsewhere. For most local and regional businesses, Presence only is the right choice because it limits delivery to people who are actually in the area where you operate. Presence or interest can make sense for travel and hospitality businesses, but it is rarely the right default for lead generation or local service campaigns.
The general guideline is to move to Target CPA bidding once a campaign has recorded at least thirty conversions in the past thirty days. Before that threshold, the algorithm does not have enough data to reliably estimate the likelihood of conversion for new users, which leads to inconsistent delivery and unpredictable costs. When you do make the switch, set the initial Target CPA slightly above your current average cost per conversion to give the algorithm room to operate before you start tightening targets.
The most reliable way is to go through each campaign’s settings manually and check the networks, location targeting, bid strategy, ad schedule, and conversion goals against your campaign objectives. Tools like a Google Ads account audit or a setup checklist help catch common mistakes. Looking at the search terms report, the locations report, and the devices report in the first two weeks of a campaign will also surface any setting that is sending budget in the wrong direction.
