# Action plan: Google Ads waste audit for harbourfinch-demo.com, 3 November 2026

Sample client. Harbour & Finch LLP is a fictional firm; the format is the one every report uses.
Twelve tasks in the order to do them: account changes that take minutes, then the site, then one test.
Paste one task at a time into Claude, or send the file to whoever manages your ads.

## 1. Add "legal aid" as a phrase match negative
Why: 13 clicks and $639.67 on the search "legal aid", no consultation booked.
Where: The negative keywords of the Employment campaign. Blocks no search that converted.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: In 30 days, no spend on searches containing "legal aid".

## 2. Add the five other free-help searches as negatives, but not "free" on its own
Why: 43 clicks and $1,032.33, no consultation booked. A phrase negative on "free" would also have blocked 2 searches that booked 8 consultations.
Where: The Employment campaign's negative keywords, with the match types in negatives.csv.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: In 30 days, "employment lawyer free consultation" still gets clicks and these five get none.
Searches: free employment lawyer, free legal advice employment, legal clinic toronto, pro bono employment lawyer, employment standards free help

## 3. Add the nine city names as phrase match negatives
Why: 51 clicks and $1,388.00 on searches for lawyers in other cities, no consultation booked. Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal are outside Ontario.
Where: The negative keywords of the Employment campaign.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: In 30 days, the search terms report shows no city other than Toronto and the GTA.
Searches: employment lawyer hamilton, wrongful dismissal lawyer ottawa, employment lawyer vancouver, labour lawyer calgary, employment lawyer barrie, wrongful dismissal lawyer london ontario, employment lawyer kitchener, employment lawyer montreal, employment lawyer windsor

## 4. Switch the location option to Presence in both non-brand campaigns
Why: Both use Presence or interest, Google's default, which shows ads to people who show interest in Toronto wherever they are. The city negatives block nine cities; this stops the tenth.
Where: Campaign settings, Locations, Location options, in Employment and Personal injury.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: Google Ads, Locations, User locations report: clicks from outside the GTA fall to near zero within 14 days.

## 5. Add the five job and salary searches as negatives
Why: 40 clicks and $846.00 from people looking for work in law.
Where: The negative keywords of the Employment campaign.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: In 30 days, no spend on searches with "jobs", "salary" or "become".
Searches: employment lawyer salary, paralegal jobs toronto, legal assistant jobs, how to become an employment lawyer, law clerk salary ontario

## 6. Add the 14 negatives for forms, courses and government services
Why: 63 clicks and $963.00. One of them, "lawyer cost per hour", carries a note: add it only if the fees page answers the question.
Where: The negative keywords of the campaign each one spent in, as listed in negatives.csv.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: In 30 days, none of the 14 appears in the search terms report.
Searches: employment insurance application, workers compensation claim form, car accident report toronto, ontario labour board phone number, slip and fall statistics, human rights tribunal forms, employment law course, toronto courthouse address, record of employment, lawyer cost per hour, small claims court forms, minimum wage ontario 2026, vacation pay rules ontario, stat holiday pay ontario

## 7. Add the four calculator and template negatives, after one decision
Why: 34 clicks and $702.00, no consultation booked. Two are severance calculators, searched by people who have often just been let go: block them, or build a calculator page that ends with a free first call and send the ads there.
Where: The Employment campaign's negative keywords, or a new /severance-calculator page.
Who: Owner decides, then whoever manages the ads
Check: If you build the page, leave the two calculator negatives out and judge the page after six weeks.
Searches: severance calculator ontario, severance pay calculator, resignation letter template, termination letter sample

## 8. Make "Phone number clicks" a secondary conversion action
Why: "Calls from website" and "Phone number clicks" both count as conversions and record the same calls: on 33 of the 41 days with a call, they moved together on the same search term. Up to 29 of the 94 conversions may be one call counted twice, and both campaigns bid to that number.
Where: Goals, Conversions, Summary. Open "Phone number clicks" and set it to Secondary.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: For the next 30 days, conversions and calls answered at the front desk should roughly agree.

## 9. Put the phone number in the first screen of /wrongful-dismissal on phones
Why: Google rates the landing page experience of three keywords that send people here below average. Together they spent $2,228. On a phone, the first screen is a photo and a heading; the number is below it.
Where: /wrongful-dismissal, above the photo, as a tap-to-call link.
Who: Web developer
Check: The keyword report's Landing page exp. column, four weeks after the change.

## 10. Do the same on /severance
Why: "severance package lawyer" spent $912 with a landing page experience rated below average. The page has the same first screen.
Where: /severance, above the photo.
Who: Web developer
Check: The same column, four weeks after the change.

## 11. Give "workplace harassment lawyer" its own ad group and ads
Why: It sits in the Wrongful dismissal ad group, whose ads never mention harassment, so Google rates its ad relevance below average. It spent $400.
Where: A new ad group in Employment, with two responsive search ads that use the word harassment.
Who: Whoever writes the ads
Check: Ad relevance for the keyword reaches Average or better within two weeks.

## 12. Test pausing the brand campaign for four weeks
Why: It spent $1,411 in 90 days on searches for the firm's name, where the site already ranks first and took 1,887 organic clicks.
Where: The Brand campaign. Pause it on a Monday; keep everything else the same.
Who: Whoever manages the ads
Check: Brand clicks, paid and organic added together, against the four weeks before. If a rival starts bidding on the name, switch it back on.