Common Google Ads Mistakes Businesses Make in Dubai

Not Using Negative Keywords

This is the single most expensive mistake in Google Ads, and it is staggeringly common in the UAE. Without negative keywords, your ads show up for searches that have nothing to do with buying your product or service.

A Dubai moving company bidding on 'movers Dubai' without negative keywords will pay for clicks from people searching 'free movers Dubai,' 'DIY moving tips Dubai,' or 'movers Dubai salary.' None of those people are potential customers, but every click costs money.

Building a proper negative keyword list takes time upfront, but it can reduce wasted spend by 20–40 percent. It should be reviewed and expanded weekly, especially during the first few months of a campaign.

Sending All Traffic to the Homepage

Your homepage is not a landing page. It tries to speak to everyone and ends up converting no one. Yet many Dubai businesses set up Google Ads campaigns that send every click to their homepage regardless of what the person searched for.

If someone searches 'villa painting services Dubai,' they should land on a page specifically about villa painting — with pricing context, photos of completed work, and a clear way to request a quote. Sending them to your homepage and hoping they navigate to the right service is a recipe for high bounce rates.

Dedicated landing pages for each ad group typically improve conversion rates by 2–5x. That is not a marginal improvement — it is the difference between a campaign that works and one that bleeds money.

Ignoring Mobile Bid Adjustments

In the UAE, mobile traffic accounts for the majority of search volume. For many businesses — particularly in real estate, food delivery, and local services — over 70 percent of Google Ads clicks come from mobile devices.

Despite this, many campaigns run the same bids for desktop and mobile. The problem is that mobile users behave differently. They are more likely to call, less likely to fill out long forms, and more sensitive to page load times.

If your landing pages are not optimised for mobile, you might actually want to reduce mobile bids until you fix them. Alternatively, if your mobile conversion rate is strong, increasing mobile bids can capture more of that high-intent traffic.

Not Accounting for UAE Seasonality

Dubai has predictable seasonal patterns that affect search behaviour, and most Google Ads campaigns do not account for them at all.

During Ramadan, search patterns shift significantly. People browse later at night, purchasing behaviour changes, and certain industries see dramatic swings in demand. Restaurants, fitness centres, and retail businesses need to adjust bidding, ad copy, and scheduling during this period.

Summer (June–August) is another major shift. Many residents leave the UAE, but those who stay are actively searching for indoor activities, travel deals, and services. Businesses that pause campaigns entirely during summer miss real opportunities, while those that maintain the same budget may waste money on reduced demand.

The smart approach is to plan your budget calendar around these patterns — increasing spend before peak periods and adjusting messaging to match seasonal intent.

Setting Up Campaigns and Forgetting Them

Google Ads is not a set-it-and-forget-it platform. Yet we regularly encounter accounts where campaigns have been running unchanged for months — same bids, same keywords, same ads, same budget allocation.

Search behaviour changes constantly. New competitors enter the market. Click costs fluctuate. What worked three months ago may be wasting money today. Without regular optimisation, campaigns degrade over time.

At minimum, campaigns need weekly attention: reviewing search terms, pausing underperforming keywords, testing new ad copy, and adjusting bids based on conversion data. Monthly is not enough, and quarterly is neglect.

What This Means for Your Business

If your Google Ads campaigns are not delivering the results you expected, it is probably not because Google Ads does not work for your industry. It is almost certainly because the campaigns have one or more of the issues above.

The good news is that most of these problems can be fixed without starting over. A proper account audit, cleaning up negative keywords, building dedicated landing pages, and establishing a regular optimisation routine can turn an underperforming campaign around within 4–8 weeks.

The bad news is that every week these issues go unaddressed, you are paying for clicks that will never become customers.

When This Advice Does Not Apply

If your monthly Google Ads budget is under AED 2,000, some of these optimisations (like dedicated landing pages for each campaign) may not justify the investment. At very low budgets, focusing on a narrow set of high-intent keywords with a single strong landing page is usually more practical.

Businesses in very niche B2B industries with tiny search volumes may find that Google Ads simply does not have enough relevant traffic to justify a campaign. In those cases, LinkedIn advertising or direct outreach often works better.

If your primary growth channel is organic and you are already generating strong leads through SEO, adding Google Ads is optional — not mandatory. It can accelerate results, but it is not always necessary.