We took over a new Google Ads account and got 8 call bookings from Performance Max in the first week. 6 of them were spam.
Small dataset, but more than enough to warrant a diagnostic. Here’s the full checklist we ran, the one fix that actually solved it, and the broader lesson about how PMax works.
The diagnostic checklist
Before touching the bidding signal, we ran through every place spam can leak into a PMax campaign.
1. Conversion tracking
- Is the booking event firing cleanly on the confirmation page?
- Are duplicate conversions being counted from the same user?
- Is the offline import healthy and matching back to the right clicks?
- Are we retracting spam from our conversions?
2. Negative keywords and search themes
- Are any competitor, job-seeker, or freelancer terms leaking in?
- Are the search themes narrow enough to actually match the ICP?
- Has brand been separated out cleanly?
3. Audience signals
- Has the customer match list been uploaded and refreshed recently?
- Is first-party CRM data feeding in (closed-wons, not just leads)?
- Are similar audiences being built off revenue, not form fills?
4. Asset groups and placement
- Are sitelinks pointing to the right pages, not the FAQ or blog?
- Are creative variants slipping into low-intent Display or Gmail placements?
- Has Google’s auto-generated AI asset been turned off?
5. Landing page friction
- Are there qualifying questions in the form?
- Is anything in place to filter low-intent or bot traffic?
- Does the page speak to the ICP, or is it generic enough that anyone books?
Everything above checked out. The leak wasn’t there.
The actual fix
We were optimizing for book a call. So the algorithm did exactly that — it found the cheapest people willing to book a call.
We switched the conversion objective to showed up to the call. This is a custom event we fire into Google Ads once the sales rep updates the CRM to confirm attendance.
Now the algorithm has to find humans who actually attend. Book rate dropped — but the bookings coming through are showing up.
A few takeaways
- PMax rewards whatever signal you feed it. And it does a really good job at it.
- “Book a call” is a weak signal. Anyone — including bots and spam farms — can book one.
- “Showed up” is a strong signal. It filters for humans with real intent.
If your PMax is producing volume but quality feels off, the fix is almost always choosing a further bottom-funnel conversion event. Feed it a weak signal and you get cheap volume. Feed it a strong signal and you get real intent.
Better input → better output. Same pattern everywhere.