Opus GrowthForumSearch, Performance Max, bidding, negative keywords and account audits.
Our Target CPA on a lead gen Search campaign is set at 60 but the actual CPA runs around 85, and someone on the team wants to drop the target to 50 today to force it down. I'd…
Final URL expansion is on by default in a lot of Search campaigns, and people keep arguing about whether to leave it that way. The case for it is that Google sends clicks to…
Been going back and forth on Search Partners for a small lead-gen account, say a dental clinic with one Search campaign and a handful of conversions a month. The Network segment…
Competitor brand bidding comes up every few months, and the case for it is easy to see. People searching a rival's name already know the category and are comparing, and CPCs can…
Say you've got a lead gen account on Target CPA with the schedule wide open, and someone wants to turn off nights and weekends because the cost per lead looks worse there. I'd…
Been going back and forth on this for a new account doing maybe 30 conversions a month. The argument for starting broad with Smart Bidding is that Google needs query variety to…
I keep running into the same question when setting up call conversions for local plumbers or dental clinics. Google counts a call as a conversion once it passes a duration you…
This one gets argued a lot. One side says lead with the brand because it builds recognition and makes the listing look like a real store instead of a generic product. The other…
Search partners come up in almost every account review, and I still don't see a clean consensus. The argument for switching them off is that the clicks come from sites you don't…
Take a campaign that only gets about 20 conversions a month. A 50/50 experiment leaves each arm with roughly 5 conversions over the test window, so even a big swing in cost per…
Pinning gets recommended mostly for keeping a brand name in slot one or a compliance line in place. Google's own docs warn that pinning limits how the system can combine assets,…
Picture a plumber in a mid-sized town who sets a 25-mile radius around the shop and leaves the location setting on default. Search and PMax start pulling clicks from a city 40…
A lot of the Performance Max advice says to split asset groups by product category, like shoes, bags and accessories, and I'm not sure that holds for every store. Take a shop with…
Call duration threshold is one of those settings people either leave on the default or set to 60 seconds because it sounds reasonable. The trouble is that both extremes can hurt…
Take a plumber in a mid-size city with about $1,500 a month. LSA charges per lead instead of per click, and the Google Guaranteed badge does help with trust. The catch is you pay…
Broad match plus Smart Bidding is one of those combos people either love or avoid. Google's pitch is that the bidding model uses its signals to decide which broad queries are…
Running a 20% off promo across a few hundred SKUs, and I keep seeing people overwrite the price field for the sale and change it back afterwards. I'd skip that. Keep the regular…
A common setup for plumbers, HVAC and roofers is a dynamic tracking number on the website, one per ad source, while the Business Profile keeps the real line. The worry is NAP…
Picture a store with about 3,000 SKUs where roughly 8% are sold out on any given day because of supplier delays. The feed often keeps showing them as in stock for hours after they…
Picture a plumber getting about 40 quote requests a month from the site form, with maybe a third turning into paid jobs. If the form is a plain conversion with no value, Smart…
Take a dental clinic asking whether call-only ads are worth it, because their site is mostly a brochure and they'd rather not send traffic there. I think they can work, since…
Pausing ads at 2am and pushing bids up at lunch is an old habit from manual CPC days, and with tCPA or Maximize Conversions I'm not convinced it still helps. The bidding model…
A common setup mistake is marking every micro-step as a primary conversion. Say a store gets around 40 purchases a month and also tracks add-to-cart and begin checkout. If all…
Once an account runs more than a few campaigns, I'd put the shared list to one job only: true noise. That means words like 'jobs', 'free' and 'reviews of', which are junk…
Final URL expansion sounds harmless. Google sends clicks to whatever page it thinks matches the query, and Smart Bidding will keep spending on those visits as long as they convert…
LSA vs Search with call extensions comes up constantly for local services. On paper LSA looks cheaper, since you only pay for leads that match your categories and service area. In…
Take an emergency plumber where a good share of calls come from the Business Profile, not the ad. Those calls never touch the Ads account, so the campaign can look like it's…
Call tracking starts more arguments with local service clients than almost anything else. Say a plumber gets 40 calls a week from Google Ads and half of them last under 20…
The exact vs phrase negative debate keeps coming up. Phrase is the safer block because negating "cheap plumber" also stops "cheap plumber near me". The catch is that it can take…
PMax and brand search: brand exclusions keep the campaign from taking credit for people who were already searching for you, but they also cut reported conversions, and plenty of…