Clicks and Clarity with Claire
If you’re spending real money on Google Ads and still asking, “Why isn’t this working?”—this podcast is for you.
I’m Claire Jarrett, Google Ads strategist and founder of Jarrett Digital. Each week, I break down what’s actually going on behind the numbers—so you can stop wasting ad spend, start attracting qualified leads, and scale with confidence.
No fluff. No jargon. Just clear advice, real audits, and proven strategies from accounts managing four to six figures in monthly ad spend.
Whether you're DIY-ing your ads or working with an agency, this is the clarity you've been missing.
Clicks and Clarity with Claire
Is Your Dashboard Double-Counting Leads?
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28 leads reported. Only 18 were real.
Claire audits a personal injury law firm where conversion tracking was double counting, Performance Max generated zero leads, and the target CPA was set to $2,000.
She explains how to check whether your numbers are inflated and what proper structure actually costs per lead — including a truck accident attorney getting leads at $55 each.
Welcome to Clicks and Clarity with Claire.
I audited a personal injury law firm that had spent $10,000 on Google Ads.
The dashboard said 32 conversions at $333 each.
That is already expensive. But the real number was worse.
When I looked at the conversion breakdown, it said 10 phone calls, 10 first time phone calls, 2 form submissions, 5 repeat phone calls, and 1 lead form. Add those up and you get 28.
But several of those were the same lead counted twice. A phone call and a first time phone call from the same person. A form submission and a lead form that triggered on the same action.
The real number was closer to 18.
Which means the actual cost per lead was not $333. It was closer to $550.
This is more common than you would think.
Conversion tracking in Google Ads is not as straightforward as it should be. You can have Google Ads tracking phone calls. You can have Google Analytics tracking the same calls. You can have different conversion actions firing on the same event. And unless someone goes in and checks, you end up reporting double or sometimes triple the number of leads you actually got.
Now, this firm also had a Performance Max campaign running.
Performance Max had spent money and generated zero conversions. Zero.
That did not surprise me. Performance Max for legal services is almost never a good idea. It advertises across every Google network. Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Maps. All at once. You have very little control over where the money goes.
For personal injury, a potential client is not clicking a banner ad on a gaming app. They are not watching a YouTube pre-roll and thinking oh yes, I need a lawyer. They are typing personal injury lawyer near me into Google at the moment they need one.
That is a search campaign. Not Performance Max.
The search campaign itself had 31 keywords in 1 ad group. Which is far too many. Different keyword types need different ad groups. Accident lawyer near me needs a different ad than accident attorney plus the city name. They are different searches with different intent, and they need different ads and different landing pages.
The target CPA was set to $2,000.
$2,000 per lead for a law firm. Now, I understand legal leads are expensive. But when you tell Google to aim for $2,000, Google is happy to spend right up to that amount. If last month you were getting leads at a fraction of that, why would you tell Google it is acceptable to pay more?
I have worked with legal accounts before. I had one for a truck accident attorney where we were paying $0.66 per click and getting leads at $55 each.
The difference was the structure. Many different ad groups. Each with tightly themed keywords. Each with matching ads. Maximum cost per click caps to control the spend. Not 31 keywords in 1 group with a $2,000 target.
If your Google Ads dashboard is reporting a certain number of leads, go and check the conversion actions. Look at what is actually being counted. Are phone calls being counted twice? Are form submissions being tracked by both Google Ads and Google Analytics? Is a page view being reported as a conversion?
The number Google shows you and the number of real leads sitting in your inbox are often very different.
That is it for today.
If you want me to check whether your conversion tracking is double counting, book a free audit at clairejarrett.com.
So many thanks for listening.
Bye for now.