Opus GrowthForumSearch, Performance Max, bidding, negative keywords and account audits.
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Search Partners tends to get left on by default and then forgotten. Google pitches it as extra reach, but partner sites usually convert worse than Google's own results, and the…
Picture a dental clinic in a mid-sized city. Google's default location setting covers people who are in or regularly in the area, plus anyone showing interest in it, and for a…
Say most of a store's sales come from people typing the brand name. PMax picks up those brand searches and reports them as its own conversions, so its ROAS looks great, even…
Pinning in Responsive Search Ads is one of those settings people either swear by or never touch. Pinning your brand name to position 1 is usually fine. Pinning everything else…
A client's Search campaign on Target CPA has been steady at around 40 conversions a month, and they want to double the budget ahead of a seasonal push. The usual advice is to…
Been going back and forth on this for a client with a well-known local name. Their brand term ranks first organically, with reviews and a sitelinks snippet, so paying for a brand…
Say you run a plumbing business with a website, a Google Business Profile and a few Search campaigns, and you want to know which channel actually books jobs. That means some kind…
Picture an account where form submit, phone click, WhatsApp click and a thank-you page view are all primary. Smart Bidding will chase whatever is cheapest, and that's almost…
Take an account that moves from Maximize Conversions to tCPA at 40 euros, and conversions fall from 25 a week to 9 in the first ten days. The usual advice is to sit tight because…
Has anyone pushed gross profit into conversion value instead of revenue? Take a store selling phone accessories at 20% margin next to branded cases at 60%. With revenue as the…
If a store runs 20% off codes on a lot of orders and the purchase tag sends the full pre-discount total, Smart Bidding treats those sales as worth more than the cash that actually…
Search Partners tends to get turned on by default and never looked at again. The argument for leaving it on is volume: partner sites add impressions, and on a small account every…
Brand exclusions in PMax look like the clean fix for a store with strong brand demand, but they're messier than they seem. Excluding brand terms can still leak brand queries…
Say you run lead gen for a B2B software firm where the median time from first click to signed contract is about 45 days. Google's default click-through window is 30 days, and the…
Google defaults Search campaigns to 'People in or regularly in your targeted locations', which sounds fine until you open the location report. A local service business in a big…
I've been going back and forth on this for local service accounts. Take a plumbing company in a mid-sized city. Their Search campaign costs about the same per click whether the…
I'm not convinced by the "exact match doesn't matter anymore" takes. The usual split, exact in its own campaign and broad running with a big negative list, is really about control…