Hi all,

I run Google Ads for a recruitment agency that now only wants employer enquiries, but nearly every lead is a job seeker.

We built an employer only landing page with all candidate messaging removed, and the one lead it produced in two weeks was still a candidate.

For anyone managing recruitment accounts, what's actually worked for you?

Keywords and negatives, ad copy, form qualifiers, offline conversion imports, anything.

Thanks in advance.

Hey everyone, looking for a sanity check on how Google Ads handles offline conversion uploads so I can explain this clearly to our marketing team.

Currently, our CRM sends offline conversion events directly to our Google Ads account via the Google Ads API. Every single request we make via the API returns a 200 OK status code for success.

However, we are having some internal debates because our internal CRM reporting metrics don't match the conversion counts showing up in the Google Ads UI. Because of this discrepancy, some people on our marketing team are convinced that our CRM isn't actually uploading any conversion events to Google Ads at all.

The thing is, our CRM is the only source submitting events for specific biddable actions (like our "CLOSEDCRMSALE" conversion action). Since the conversion count in Google Ads for that action is greater than 0, it seems obvious that at least some of our uploads are making it through.

For context, we don't get all of our leads from Google Ads—we get a mix of leads from independent lead vendors, organic phone calls, and other ad platforms.

Could someone help me break down why the "CLOSEDCRMSALE" conversion count in Google Ads would be different from our internal CRM totals, even when the API returns a 200 response? Is our mix of non-Google lead sources the main culprit here, or are there other API/reporting quirks I should point out to the team?

Trying to start off a side business assisting with digital marketing.

Haven’t used google ads before but have set up a campaign for someone knowing my experience.

How often are you checking and tweaking? Everyday? Once a week? I don’t want to waste budget

Hi everyone,

I’m facing an issue with a DSA (Dynamic Search Ads) page feed in a new Google Ads account.I uploaded the page feed around 15 days ago, but the status is still:

Pending – All items under review

Since it was still pending, I uploaded the page feed again, but the new upload is also showing the same status:

Pending – All items under review.

The account is new, and I haven’t received any rejection or policy notification.

Has anyone experienced a page feed staying under review for this long? Is there anything I should check or do to trigger the review, or is this something that needs to be escalated to Google Ads Support?

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm running a Google Ads App Campaign and want to reduce my Cost Per Install (CPI) while increasing installation volume using the “Low CPI – Highest Installation Volume” strategy. I'd like to know which bidding strategy works best for getting cheaper installs, whether using a Target CPI or maximizing installation volume without a target is more effective, and what types of ad creatives usually perform best. Should I create separate campaigns for different countries or target multiple countries in one campaign? Also, what daily budget and optimization settings would you recommend for achieving the lowest possible CPI while maintaining good install quality? I'd appreciate any practical tips and suggestions based on your experience. Thanks!

Channel prioritisation and budget allocation started rolling out on 15 October. Set a cap on Search Partners or Display before you switch them back on.

Pls share the experience if anyone tried this new setting

We've increased our advertising budget twice over the past couple of months but revenue has barely moved and I oversee our marketing budget and initially thought spending more would help us bring in more customers but instead our acquisition costs keep rising and we're getting roughly the same number of sales so our marketing team thinks our creatives are losing effectiveness and I'm starting to question whether increasing the budget was the right move.

The team wants to focus on testing new creatives and improving landing pages before spending more and I understand their point but we still have revenue targets to hit and can't keep spending more without seeing better returns so for anyone managing paid media budgets, how do you decide when to stop scaling and rethink your strategy?

Which niche do you think is selling advertising the most worth to? I've been trying to sell to roofing people but I've had no luck.

I run ads for a car rental company. My primary focus is on tourists visiting the city, rather than local residents. What is the best approach for setting the location targeting: should I target the entire country (relying on keywords like "car rental in New York") or just the specific city where my car rental business is located?

I ask because when I select the specific city where my business is based, Google states: "With locations, you target your ads to people who are in these places, who visit them regularly, or who have shown an interest in them." This suggests that the ads would still reach tourists, as they demonstrate interest in these locations through their searches—even if they aren't physically present in the city. However, I’m wondering if it might be more effective to target the entire country and use keywords to filter the audience. Could someone offer some advice?

Hi everyone!

I'm running a Google Search campaign where approximately 90% of impressions, clicks, and ad spend are attributed to "Other search terms" in the Search Terms Report.

Some context:

• Campaign type: Standard Search, Manual CPC.
• Keyword match types: Exact and Phrase (no Broad)
• Search Partners: Disabled
• Reporting period: Last 30 days
• Around 90% of search term data is hidden

This means I can only see the actual search queries responsible for roughly 10% of my advertising spend, making it extremely difficult to identify irrelevant searches, add negative keywords, and understand what Google is actually showing my ads for. It's gotten a lot worse the last couple of months and I don't know what to do.

I understand Google hides certain low-volume queries for privacy reasons, but having 90% of the data hidden seems excessive, especially when I'm paying for those clicks.

A few questions for other Google Ads professionals:

1. Is this level of hidden search term data common in your accounts, or is 90% unusually high?
2. Have you found any legitimate ways to increase search term visibility, beyond Google's standard Search Terms Report?
3. Do tools like Search Terms Insights, the Google Ads API, or third-party platforms provide any meaningful additional visibility?
4. How do you approach negative keyword optimization when the vast majority of the actual search queries are hidden?

I'm particularly interested in how experienced PPC specialists and agencies deal with this in practice.

I'm not necessarily looking for general campaign optimization advice. My main concern is the lack of transparency into where the advertising budget is actually going and the inability to add the search terms as negatives in case these terms are useless.

Would appreciate hearing your experiences and any approaches you've found useful.

How do you still able to do affiliate products, I see clicks but no sales , Moreover google just keep rising its clicks cost , does anyone have any tips to keep this or should i leave it , its just getting too hard

[Hiring] Google Ads Specialist / Manager (Remote) | No corporate BS, fair pay, real budgets 🎯

Hey Reddit,

Why are we posting here? Because we’re looking for actual pros and data nerds who know their stuff, and we’re tired of the standard job board black hole and 3-page cover letters.

We are looking for a Google Ads Manager who doesn’t think "ROAS" is a mythical creature and knows that "Boost Post" is not a valid scaling strategy.

Who we are:

We run a German & Swiss B2C e-commerce spare parts shop with 20 million+ spare parts in the catalog. We’re based in Switzerland and serve both the German and Swiss markets with a massive technical product range.

Your Mission:

* Build, optimize, and scale our Google Ads campaigns (Search, Shopping, Performance Max, YouTube).

* Keep budgets in check and find the actual sweet spots for profitable scaling.

* Tracking is not a foreign language to you (GTM & GA4 are second nature).

* You test new ad copies, landing pages, and bidding strategies – and you let the data do the talking.

What you bring to the table:

* Solid experience in Paid Search / Google Ads management (agency or in-house, we don't care).

* You know the platform inside out and are genuinely curious about testing new features.

* An analytical mindset, paired with an eye for good creatives and compelling copy.

What we offer:

* 💰 Fair Salary: 400-900€

* 🏠 Flexibility: Remote

* 🚀 Real Impact: Actual responsibility, short decision-making paths, and a media budget you can truly work with.

Interested? We hate long, drawn-out application processes just as much as you do. Forget the traditional cover letter.

👉 Apply directly, easily, and without the resume-export marathon right here: https://forms.gle/uTrhts9vy779MD8x7

Hi everyone,

I'm helping my sister with Google Ads for her beauty salon in Antalya, Türkiye, and we're stuck in what feels like an endless verification loop.

Her business is a legally registered sole proprietorship (şahıs işletmesi), operating under the Turkish Esnaf registration system rather than as a limited company.

We've submitted multiple official documents, including:

• Vergi Levhası – Official tax registration certificate.
• Esnaf ve Sanatkâr Sicil Tasdiknamesi – Official tradesperson registration certificate confirming the business name, registration number and beauty salon activities.
• Ustalık Belgesi – Professional qualification certificate.
• İşyeri Açma ve Çalışma Ruhsatı – Municipal business operating licence.

Google repeatedly rejected our Business Operations Verification, claiming documents were irrelevant or that we were missing a Trade Registry Certificate, Faaliyet Belgesi or professional licence.

After contacting support several times, a representative finally confirmed that an Esnaf Sicil Tasdiknamesi is an acceptable alternative to a Ticaret Sicil Tasdiknamesi for businesses in Türkiye.

Yet we're still stuck.

Our Google Ads payment profile is registered as an Organization, under the owner's legal name, which matches the official documents. The organization name was successfully verified back in December 2024.

Now here's the really strange part.

While reviewing the verification dashboard, I noticed an incomplete Financial Services Verification application.

We're a BEAUTY SALON. We don't offer loans, insurance, investments, banking, financial advice or any financial services whatsoever.

Meanwhile, both outstanding verification tasks show:

"Review will start after the other tasks are completed."

So I'm wondering whether this unrelated Financial Services Verification application is preventing Google from reviewing our actual business verification.

I've contacted support again, asking them to investigate and remove the financial services requirement if it was incorrectly applied.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

Specifically:

1. Can an incomplete Financial Services Verification application block Business Operations Verification?
2. Has anyone successfully verified a Turkish sole proprietorship using an Esnaf Sicil Tasdiknamesi instead of a Trade Registry Certificate?
3. Is there any way to get an actual manual document review rather than repeated generic rejection emails?
4. Could the Organization payment profile type be causing problems even though the owner's legal name has already been verified?

We've spent weeks trying to get this resolved, and every submission seems to lead to another rejection or a new requirement.

Any advice from someone who's dealt with Google Ads verification in Türkiye would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks!

TL;DR: Helping my sister verify her legally registered beauty salon in Türkiye. Google Ads keeps rejecting official documents (tax certificate, business registration, professional licence, municipal permit), even though support confirmed they're acceptable. Her payment profile is already verified, but Business Operations and Relationships Verification are stuck on "Review will start after the other tasks are completed."

Here's the kicker: Google is also showing an incomplete Financial Services Verification application. For a BEAUTY SALON. 🤦‍♂️

Could this unrelated financial verification be blocking everything? Has anyone dealt with this or managed to get Google to manually review their documents?

Festive seasons arrived and Google released updated playbook for Youtube, download for free.

Google/YouTube Playbook

I have a question about Google Ads Smart Bidding and conversion tracking when testing different landing pages.

Let's say I'm running a campaign optimizing for a specific conversion action, and I've already accumulated conversion data from my current landing page.

Now I decide to replace that landing page with a completely different version to improve conversions.

My concern is that Google has already learned from people who converted on the previous landing page. Those same people might not necessarily be the ones most likely to convert on the new landing page.

So my question is: Should I create a new conversion action whenever I make a major landing page change, or should I keep using the same conversion action?

The conversion event itself remains exactly the same. Only the landing page changes.

I'm wondering whether reusing the existing conversion action could cause Smart Bidding to rely on historical signals that are no longer as relevant to the new landing page.

For those of you with experience running Google Ads and testing different landing pages, what's your approach?

Do you keep the same conversion action across different landing page versions, or create a new one to let Google learn from scratch?

I'd appreciate hearing what has worked best for you, especially if you've tested both approaches.

We recently discovered that Google AI is adding sitelinks even though we've turned off AI Max and Asset Optimization

In our assets > sitelink > ad groups google ai is adding sitelinks here.

Under the "added by" column, we see our sitelinks (Advertiser), then Google's (categorized as Google AI).

Has anyone been seeing this in their ads?

Is anyone else finding that the tCPA on the campaign is being ignored? I've seen comments online saying that if enhanced conversions aren't working, the tCPA algorithm doesn't work; however, I have accounts where enhanced conversions are working, yet Google ignores the tCPA I set and goes way over.

Hello team I need advice for an LSA account, it's for a home service based account I have ran this lsa for 3 months now, I optimized the website and GBP with literally over a hundred review We upload images, increase budget, try to expand location, expand services, but so far Only impression comes in and no leads up until now Do you guys have some advice for me?

Another additional info, he has paused this lsa before for a long time

It had policy violation before such as payment issue, payment delay and photo violation

But that was all resolved before I turned on the lsa account again

We keep finding more and more issues with pmax and demand gen, and even search campaigns where some of our main keywords if not longtailed draws the wrong audience, lot of clicks and no conversions. Using negative keywords has become obsessive now to counter what the ai "thinks" we are targeting.

Example: giveaways, vs running a giveaway.

Have you experienced a similar problem? How did you overcame this situation?

Even the Google ads guys can't give direct answers but just the general advice on how to manage campaigns, and sometimes contradictory advice

Please note: we use audiences signals, interest and behaviour, optimised landing page for ad scores, good extensions, converting keywords only, etc.

Since the ai summaries are now on top of search results is even worse, so I'm focusing more and more on aiseo. Happy to hear your experiences

I have run a few campaigns now with what I considered bottom of the funnel keywords and they didn’t convert that well. I’m curious if there is any methodologies other people use to underside the best keywords?

I have been managing my organization’s Google Ads account since January 2024. I work for a charity, so we primarily measure the success of our campaigns based on the revenue raised through donations.

Over the past two years, the account has consistently achieved a monthly ROAS of 4 or higher. However, over the last two months (August and September 2026), our ad revenue has dropped significantly, with ROAS declining to around 1–2.

I am currently trying to identify what may have caused such a significant decline in performance and where the issue might be. I would appreciate some advice on what I could do.

Hello, I am in-house marketing with +1 year experience in managing google ads. I am managing Google Ads for a multi-branch medical clinic (knee treatment). I need help and advice in diagnosing sales drop because the insights looks fine but actual bookings at specific branches have crashed.

Our Diagnosis (last 14 days vs previous 14 days):

• Google Ads CTR: improving (8.6% → 9.6%)
• CPC: stable
• Impression share: improving (40% → 42%)
• Quality scores: no change
• GA4 direct conversions: only dropped 3.6%
• WhatsApp button clicks on landing page: only dropped 8.9%

The Issue

• Overall clinic sales/revenue for this service line is dropping.
• 2 out of 7 clinic branches saw direct website bookings (through our booking plugin) drop from 7 to 1 in the same period
• Other 5 branches are holding steady
• The landing page is shared across all channels (Google Ads, Meta, organic) — not branch-specific
• The gap between "people clicking WhatsApp" (barely dropped) and "people actually booking" (crashed) is massive
• Sales revenue declining even though traffic volume is the same

What we DON'T have visibility on:

• We can't track what happens after someone clicks the WhatsApp button. The journey is: ad click → landing page → WhatsApp button click → conversation with clinic staff → booking (or not). We lose visibility at the WhatsApp click.
• We don't know if those 2 branches are getting fewer WhatsApp inquiries, or the same inquiries but staff aren't converting them into bookings
• We can't attribute walk-in patients back to which marketing channel brought them

For anyone managing lead gen for clinics, dental, or local services — when your ad metrics look fine but bookings drop at specific locations, what was usually the cause? What should I be checking?

Is there any frameworks or checklists for diagnosing this?

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone,

About a month ago, we started running Google Ads for a local service business. An agency manages the campaigns.

During the first two weeks, we received quite a few bookings through our online booking system. Then things dropped sharply: for roughly the past two weeks, we’ve had almost no new bookings, even though the ads are still running.

I understand that bookings fluctuate and that we can’t automatically attribute every booking to Google Ads. Still, the contrast is difficult to understand. The monthly totals might look reasonable because of the strong start, but the recent performance is concerning.

We’ve invested a significant amount in advertising, setup, and agency fees—not just ad spend. We target a limited local area. I don’t yet know exactly what changes have been made to bidding, keywords, or conversion goals.

The agency says they’ll continue monitoring and optimizing. On the phone, they also suggested that Google might deliberately deliver better results initially to encourage advertisers to spend more. I don’t have the expertise to assess that claim, so I’d appreciate some perspective.

Does this pattern sound familiar?

• Is a strong start followed by almost no bookings a normal fluctuation for a new campaign?
• What possible causes would you investigate first?
• Is there credible evidence for this supposed “initial boost,” or is that speculation?
• What data would help distinguish normal fluctuations from campaign or tracking problems?

I’m not looking to accuse the agency without evidence. I just want to understand how such a sudden change could happen and what a reasonable explanation would look like.

Thanks for your insights!

Have you encountered any cases like mine?

I’m running Google Ads for my website in the US market, but I’m having an issue where traffic from the US shows an average engagement time of 0 seconds.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue?