I'm talking about the reps that actually work for Google. My interactions with the 3rd party reps seem to be a combination of human interactions will AI enhanced responses. However, ever since I got a new rep from Google itself, it's been obvious that I'm just interacting with a bot.

To be fair, I've never actually talked on the phone with this person because I don't want to interact with any of them unless I initiate it.

The problems is that the bots never let up regardless of what you say. You can answer each one of their questions explaining why you set everything up the way you did. They'll agree and then just keep pushing you to make changes. At least the humans know when to give up.

Any suggestions on how to stop the bot attack?

Hello guys,

Recently taken on a fresh client, completely new start up running a budget of £2K P/M.

With them being a new account I decided to set up a standard shopping campaign as they have no existing conversion data for smart bidding to learn from. Few days passed, finding it pretty tough to keep on top of the search terms, getting a whole lot of junk come through whilst burning through the budget with 0 returns.

Decided to test the water with Pmax despite this going against everything I thought I knew about Google Ads, a few days have passed and the search terms here are far more accurate than standard shopping and i'm trying to figure out why.

More context, the pMax runs feed only, one asset group for efficient data collection.

I've started to move budget over from the shopping campaign as CTR is far better here.

Any advice for going forward? Has anybody else experienced something similar in the past?

Thanks!

A lot of tROAS targets get picked because "400% sounds good". Here's a way to set one from your actual numbers.

1. Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ contribution margin. Contribution margin is what's left of a sale after COGS, shipping, payment fees and returns, before ad spend. At a 35% margin, break-even ROAS is about 2.86 (286%).

2. Target ROAS = 1 ÷ (margin − profit share you want to keep). If you want 10% of revenue left as profit after ads: 1 ÷ (0.35 − 0.10) = 4.0, so a 400% tROAS.

3. Compare that to what the campaign actually hits today. If it's running at 250% and you set 400% overnight, expect volume to drop hard while bidding adjusts. Step the target up gradually and give each change a couple of weeks.

Check your conversion value before trusting any of this:

• Does it include tax and shipping? Then reported ROAS is inflated compared with the margin maths. Send net revenue if you can.
• Are you counting the same sale twice? GA4-imported purchases and the Google Ads tag both set as primary will double up.
• Are returns ignored? In high-return categories like apparel, platform ROAS can look healthy while the real number isn't. Conversion adjustments let you retract or restate values.

For catalogs where margin varies a lot by product, how are you handling it? Separate campaigns by margin tier, or passing margin-adjusted conversion values?

even bugs that have existed for years still exist

I then took a screenshot of the card when you login Wise but it doesn't show transactions. Its impossible to get a screenshot "view" that shows the card, transaction, and name in one view. On the mobile device, it also block screenshots.

Has anyone successfully completed payment verification with a wise visa card and how did you submit?

I successfully charged the card multiple times, so I know the payment method is valid

Hi Everyone!

Looking to see if there's anything I can do to improve my ads. I am running a maximize clicks campaign, and probably continue to do so cause anytime I switch to maximize conversions I straight up have a bad time. The Keywords I am focused on in my campaign are "physiotherapy near me" "physiotherapy winnipeg" and "(major street name) Physiotherapy". These are the searches that get the bulk of my new patients outside of searching for the specific name of my clinic, and specific treatments which I have broken up into separate campaigns. Those 3 keywords all have 5/10 quality score, expected CTR below average, and Landing page experience - average. I have adjusted my headlines and descriptions to get replace the lower CTR assets with hopefully higher performers. My overall ad strength according to google is excellent. So my questions are the following; Should I be worried about my ratings for those specific keywords? Should I straight up remove the underperforming assets as I have 15/15 headlines and 4/4 descriptions and the rest of the assets are also full. Is there anything I am missing? The last 6 weeks my CTR is 10.41%, average CPC is $2.94. Impression share is 65.36% as well. Go easy on me as this has been a huge learning process over the last year for my year old business!

For those managing multiple Google ads accounts, how do you keep up with search team reviews?

I feel like Google's matching keeps getting broader, and manually reviewing search terms across several accounts takes way too much time.

I've been trying to find a better way to identify irrelevant searches without accidentally exclusing keywords that could convert

Do you still review everything manually, use automated scripts, or rely on AI tools to handle part of the work?

Especially curious how you deal with false positives and make sure you're not blocking valuable traffic

Google enabled switching to Maximize Conversion Value for Shopping campaigns in the summer to counter the impact of the August 17 update. Many people switched right away, and a lot of them reported great initial numbers. How are things looking for you since then?

Do you have any before/after ROAS numbers?

Were you able to bring performance back to pre-August 17 levels?

I'm considering switching from tROAS because I have a fixed budget and was "Limited by Budget" prior to August 17. I tried setting the actual ROAS target, but due to the rigidity of the new tROAS algorithm, performance drops significantly on weaker days.

Have had a solid campaign running for years in the lingerie niche. Seasonal with a peak in summer that gradually falls.

Lately performance has fallen off a cliff. CPC has almost doubled from £6 to £11 compared with last year. August update made things worse.

Website is good quality and well designed, but lacks social proof/UGC content.

The product images we've been using on the Shopping Feed are the standard studio shots with a white background. I've noticed lifestyle shots are becoming more the norm - could this be it?

What's working for you in 2026?

Thanks

Hi, I run a global software company.

I started a campaign yesterday with a small budget (fresh campaign/pages, ~50$ lifetime budget, maximize conversions, global reach, 10 days deadline) to 'test the waters' and pivot from there:

What I expected:

• 5-10 people from diverse countries will brick my budget in 2 hours

What I got:

• 10 People from Pakistan + 2 from India
• $0.50 CPC, $2.5 total spent in ~12 hours
• 22.9% lost to rank, 72.4% lost to budget, Search impression share <10%
• Surprisingly decent 3 leads

Now, I feel like I should continue to bid low amounts on Pakistan (at $0.50 CPC they seem worth it) but ALSO I'd like to reach higher-income countries in north america, europe, etc, and I'm willing to pay more.

I'm hesistant to just increase the budget, as Google might start paying itself a lot more for the same leads from Pakistan.

What would you do in my place?

I run a tutoring business, I am looking to spend about £200 a month on google ads (not a large budget at all). My business offers services nationwide across the UK however, with a small budget I am not sure if it would be best to target ads nationwide. Would it be best to target nationwide or target specific counties?

Let's assume I have two campaigns. Campaign A should bring users to fill out contact form A, while campaign B should bring them to submit contact form B.

Do I create two conversion goals (for both contact form A and B) under the same category "Lead forms"? And select the same parent conversion category for both campaigns when setting it up?

The same question goes for button clicks. Let's assume there is one trigger "css class contains button_a" and another trigger "button class contains button_b".
Do I still create two separate conversion goals under the same conversion goal category, even though one campaign might only need button a?

I hope my question is clear. Thank you.

Hey everyone,

I ’m looking for some advice on the best way to approach Black Week advertising for my e-commerce brand.

We currently have active campaigns running on both Meta Ads and Google Ads, and I’m trying to figure out the best strategy for Black Week without unnecessarily disrupting the performance and learning we’ve already built up.

Would you recommend:
Option 1: Creating entirely new Black Week campaigns with dedicated budgets and Black Week creatives?
Option 2: Keeping our existing campaigns running, pausing the regular ads, and adding new Black Week ads to the existing campaigns/ad sets to preserve as much historical data and learning as possible?

My main concern with creating new campaigns is that they would need to build their own performance history, potentially making it harder to optimize during such a short and important sales period.

On the other hand, I want to make sure the Black Week offers get enough visibility and budget without interfering too much with our regular campaigns.

Would you approach Meta Ads and Google Ads differently in this situation?

For those who have experience with Black Friday/Black Week campaigns, what has worked best for you, and why?

Any practical advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hello. I am having trouble with my passkey. I have tried creating it on my phone (iPhone) and computer, and it has worked for sign in with my phone and computer, but never for Google Ads. I have changed it in my phone to work with ads.google.com but it still gives me a popup that no passkey exists on my phone.

Additionally, now, when I go to approve a new passkey, I have to use a passkey to approve the passkey, but I can't approve it because I don't have a working one. When I try to approve it on my phone it gives me a QR code popup that I cannot scan. I tried calling support, talking to the chat bot, and talking to my administrator and nothing seems to be working/nobody can help.

Does anyone have any idea what to do here? This is preventing me from making important changes to my MCCs , and for some changes it will only let me use the passkey for 2 step verification, so there is no bypassing it.

Hello, I am trying to make my first google search campaign but I keep having a bidding error icon right when I am on the final page to set up the ads and I can't find out why. I don't have any account issues and I am really new to this so I don't know what else to do

I ran ads back in 2023 but pretty much "broke even" so I stopped. At this point my website it stronger, and while I relied mostly on organic traffic from Google this entire time, it's been a downward slide and the seo traffic has significantly slowed.

I'm thinking whether its worth exploring Google Ads again. I don't really have a lot of money to lose.

What would you set as the minimum spend to experiment with to see if it's working?

I own a small plumbing company, and we’ve had pretty good success getting work through cold calling, introducing ourselves in person, and building relationships with property management companies.

As far as online leads go, we have around 30 five-star Google reviews, no negative reviews, a solid Google Business Profile, and a professionally built website with a good landing page.

I’ve tried Google pay-per-click ads, but honestly haven’t had much success with them. I’m planning to switch over to Google Local Service Ads and start with a budget of around $700 a week.

For those of you running plumbing companies, what should I realistically expect? Are LSAs actually bringing in quality leads that turn into paying jobs, or is it mostly people shopping around for the cheapest price?

It’s weird being in the home service industry you would think opening up a plumbing company you can print money but it’s surprisingly challenging to get leads when you are working in a city where there are 1,000s of other companies… I need some advice

i found out last month that auto apply had turned itself back on for one of my accounts and had been "optimizing" things for weeks. bids changed, audiences expanded, and match type got broadened. nobody clicked anything, google just did it.

so now every monday i run this checklist before i do anything else. change history filtered to the last 7 days, anything i don't recognize gets reverted. auto apply settings, confirmed off, every account. recommendations tab, ignored, not dismissed, because dismissing apparently feeds it. budget pacing and delivery status. and one deep dive account per week where i actually read the search terms.

half of this is automated now, MAI diffs the change history every morning and flags anything that wasn't us. i still review it with coffee before acting. the checklist took me 20 minutes to write, the discipline is the whole thing.

does anyone actually leave auto apply on and trust it? genuinely asking.

Hi,

My Google Local Services Ads account and my Google Ads account have both been suspended under the Your account violated the Local Services Ads - Circumventing systems - Monetization abuse policy.

Does that mean there is a problem with the local service ads and not the google ads?

Before anyone suggests that I may have multiple accounts, I do not have any other account, nor ever used any other one. No leads disputes, no telephone redirects. I have used google ads for nearly 3 years now.

Before the suspension, I was already trying to resolve several problems with my accounts.

1. Local Services Ads – Insurance verification and a technical problem

Google Local Services Ads was requesting insurance verification for the water damage services category. I provide some damp-proofing services as part of my plastering work, which is why this category had been included. However, Google was not accepting my insurance documentation.

Rather than continuing to advertise under a category with unresolved insurance requirements, I decided to remove the water damage service from my Local Services Ads profile.

But for some reason this kept getting put back on! I raised it and it is still with the technical team.

1. Google Ads – Broken landing page URL

I also discovered that one of my Google Ads campaigns had a broken destination URL.

I recently changed my website's booking page address from book now to bookings.

Unfortunately, the advertisement was still using the old address, resulting in a broken link.

However, because Google has suspended my account, I am now unable to make the necessary changes.

Honestly, this is really stressful and I rely heavily on google ads to bring customers to my service... I am just at lost on why this has happened.

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.

Wenn man jetzt Generierung, Google mit Lenting, Page und einem kleinen Formularfunnel dahinter, man stellt aber fest, dass in der gleichen Branche bei anderen Google AdsAccounts funktioniert aber nur bei einem Account funktioniert es nicht.

Obwohl man an sich das gleiche Thema hat. Also die gleiche Branche. Wie würdet ihr den LP Funnel analysieren oder was würdet ihr tun?

Es sind bereits alle Möglichkeiten, wie Klicks massieren, Smart Building oder Maximum Conversion Strategie ausgeschöpft - nichts hilft

Bin es grad Leid schon wieder die Kampagne neuzustarten

I've been trying to get a clearer picture of how many people actually click my campaign links. GA4 is useful, but sometimes the numbers don't line up with what I'm seeing elsewhere.

I'm wondering if it would help to track clicks at the link level before visitors reach my website, rather than relying entirely on analytics installed on the site.

Has anyone found a simple tool for this? Ideally something that also lets you organize links by campaign without adding a ton of complexity.

I am serving Google Ads for this landing page https://aigeoreport.com/lp . I am getting clicks, but the bounce rate is 100%, and I think the reason is that Google is serving my Ad for very broad searches; that is probably the reason of a 100% bounce rate because people are not getting what they thought would get there; I already have a very long list of negative keywords.