Google rewards budget that can sustain a full day of impression share on the terms that matter. A budget spread across search, Shopping and Performance Max at once, below this floor, delivers a partial day of everything and a full day of nothing.
None of these are subtle. They persist because nobody is reading the reports that show them, which is what a daily-managed account is actually for.
Broad match and smart bidding will find you queries you never imagined, and some of them are genuinely valuable. The rest are job seekers, students, DIY researchers and competitors. Reading the search terms report weekly and maintaining a real negative list is the least glamorous and highest-return work in Google Ads, and it is the first thing that stops when an account is on autopilot.
If brand and non-brand sit in the same report, your blended cost per acquisition is flattered by people who were already looking for you and would mostly have arrived anyway. Splitting them changes what the account looks like — often uncomfortably — and it is the only way to know whether Google is actually growing you.
Left alone, Performance Max will absorb brand searches, existing customers and remarketing, then report an excellent return for traffic you already had. Brand exclusions, audience signals and honest channel reporting are what turn it back into a growth campaign. It also needs asset group discipline — most accounts have one asset group doing the work of five.
A phone call, a form fill and a thank-you page view from the same person counted as three conversions makes an account look twice as good as it is. We audit which actions are set as primary, what their counting settings are, and whether the values attached to them mean anything.
The purpose of an account structure is not tidiness. It is that when a number moves, you can tell what caused it and act.
Broad match with smart bidding can work well, but only with a maintained negative list and enough conversion data to steer it. Without both, it is an expensive way to discover your competitors’ brand names. The right mix depends on your volume, and we will tell you which side of that line you are on.
For retail, the feed is the campaign. Titles built for search rather than for your storefront, product types filled in, custom labels separating margin tiers and stock levels, and the quiet exclusion of products that consume budget without returning it. This is usually the highest-return month-one work in an ecommerce Google account.
Target ROAS and value-based strategies only work if the values you send are accurate. For lead generation that means sending different values for different lead qualities from your CRM. Turning on value-based bidding over flat conversion values just teaches Google to find you more of the same.
Google is not only search, and the other inventory is frequently switched on by accident rather than on purpose.
Search campaigns with display expansion enabled quietly spend a share of your search budget on placements you would never choose, including apps and games. It is a single checkbox and it is on in a surprising number of accounts.
Worth running when you have a real video asset and a product that needs explaining, and a waste when it is your TV cut-down pointed at a remarketing list. Judged on its contribution to search and direct demand, not on view-through conversions, which flatter it enormously.
Discover, Gmail and YouTube feeds behave more like paid social than search: creative-led, interruption-based, no existing intent. It can work, and it should be judged by paid social standards rather than compared against branded search.
A real audit of your live campaigns — structure, tracking, creative and where the budget is leaking. Free, no obligation, and yours to keep even if you never work with us.
Often yes, with brand excluded, real audience signals, several asset groups and honest reporting alongside. Left on defaults it will claim credit for demand you already had. The campaign type is not the problem; unmanaged is.
Usually yes, cheaply, especially if competitors are bidding on it — but it should be reported separately and never counted as acquisition. If nobody is bidding against you and your organic result owns the page, it is worth testing switching it off and measuring what actually happens.
Daily, with a structured weekly review. Changes are batched rather than made hourly, because constant edits stop smart bidding from ever settling.
Yes. Reps are useful for beta access and for escalating policy problems, and their optimisation suggestions are best treated as a list to evaluate rather than instructions. We will tell you which of their recommendations are worth taking.
Yes. Feed diagnostics, disapprovals, policy suspensions and the account-level checks that silently drop half a catalogue out of Shopping.
You do. We link as a manager account and can be unlinked in two clicks. Conversion tracking, audiences and feeds all stay in your property.
Search term waste, brand contamination, Performance Max behaviour and conversion counting — in writing, within two working days.