Branded vs non-branded split in Search Console: is a regex good enough?
Splitting branded and non-branded queries in Search Console sounds like a two minute job until you actually try it. Most people build a regex with the brand name and a few…
Splitting branded and non-branded queries in Search Console sounds like a two minute job until you actually try it. Most people build a regex with the brand name and a few…
Say a SaaS company runs LinkedIn lead gen forms at around $40 a lead, and sales says a big share of those leads are students, job hunters, or people who tapped the form by…
A lot of advertisers cut Reels from prospecting because the CPMs look cheap and the clicks look weak. Take a furniture store on $40 a day. Exclude Reels and Meta just pushes that…
Clients keep asking for one ROAS number, and I go back and forth on which one goes in the deck. Platform ROAS from Google and Meta adds up to more revenue than the shop actually…
Say you're testing ChatGPT Ads on about 300 a month. After two weeks you've got maybe nine conversions, and the cost per conversion looks bad next to your Google Search numbers.…
Seeding a lookalike with every purchaser versus a smaller group of high-value buyers keeps coming up. The usual advice is to use the biggest pool you can get, since Meta needs…
Local Services Ads keep coming up in our local services threads, and I still can't decide whether they beat regular Search for a plumber. The pitch is pay per lead instead of pay…
Take a plumber on a $30 a day Search budget wondering whether broad match plus Smart Bidding is worth it. The case for broad is that Google matches intent better than it used to,…
A cookie banner can hide a big share of EU conversions, and Consent Mode v2 is meant to win some of that back through modeling. The catch is that the model only learns from users…
I keep going back and forth on this. With an AI assistant moving budget between campaigns, the safe default is approving each change as it comes up. With 15 campaigns that gets…
A lot of prospecting setups still start with a tight interest stack, and then people wonder why CPMs look fine but sales don't scale. My view is that creative matters more than…
Mobile Shopping cuts titles off early, so the first 40 or so characters do most of the work. Most people search by category, not brand, so "Men's Trail Running Shoe, Waterproof,…
Say a store discontinued 300 products last quarter. The old URLs still pull a few organic clicks and some backlinks, so what do you do with them? The usual advice is to 301…
I'm not sure one big shared list is the right default. Terms like "free" or "jobs" are waste almost everywhere, so those belong at account level. The problem is that a shared list…
Setting a tROAS on a new Shopping account looks simple, but where the number comes from matters more than the number itself. Most people work backwards from margin. A 30% gross…
Every few months someone asks why GA4 shows 1,200 organic sessions while Search Console shows 1,800 clicks, and the thread turns into a fight over which tool is lying. Neither is.…
Merchant Center's automatic item updates setting lets Google rewrite your titles and sometimes pull attributes from your landing page when it thinks that'll match a query better.…
Picture a PMax campaign for a store with about 40 products. Final URL expansion is on by default, so Google can send traffic to any page on the site it thinks will convert. A week…
Plenty of agencies push server-side GTM on every site that runs paid traffic, and I'm not convinced it pays off below a certain size. Take a local service business with a…
Retargeting windows are a real trade-off on Meta, and the default 30 days often hides a problem. Most of that pool bounced off the product page weeks ago, so it behaves more like…
Direct in GA4 is often just where broken tracking ends up. Take a dental clinic running Meta ads with no UTMs on the Stories links, sending patients a WhatsApp link from the…
Microsoft Ads can import a Google Ads account in one go, and people still argue about whether that's a shortcut or a trap. My view: import the structure, not the settings.…
I've been reading up on Reddit Ads for B2B software and still can't tell if it's a real channel or just a fun way to burn a few hundred dollars. The case for it is that people in…
Everyone gets tempted to over-specify job titles on LinkedIn. Say you sell payroll software and target only "Finance Manager": the people who actually sign off are often a CFO or…
The Recommendations tab gets argued about a lot. Some people apply everything because Google sees way more data than they do. Others ignore it completely, since a lot of it pushes…
Say a plumber gets 40 calls a week from Search ads, but the owner reckons only 12 turn into jobs. Most setups count any call over 30 seconds as a conversion, which feels generous…
Most Standard Shopping threads split into two camps when people run it next to PMax on the same catalog. One camp builds a tree by brand, category and product type and sets bids…
Take a store with 300 SKUs, about 40 of them low-margin accessories. Those can look fine on ROAS, but the target that works for the apparel line would lose money on them. The…
Ad strength gets treated like a score to chase, and I think that's mostly wasted effort. Going from Good to Excellent usually just means adding a few more unique headlines and…
Say most of your conversions come from people searching your brand name. PMax will happily claim those orders and the ROAS looks great, but most of those shoppers would have found…