Google Ads

Google Ads is Google’s advertising system. Businesses bid to have their ad shown when somebody searches a particular thing, and they pay only when somebody actually clicks. The ads appear above the organic results, marked “Sponsored”, and on a phone they often fill the first screen entirely. Unlike SEO, which is earned over months, Google Ads starts the day it is switched on and stops the day it is switched off.

In short

• You bid on searches, and you pay per click, not per view.
• Position is decided by an auction, and the highest bid does not always win.
• It works fastest for people searching for something they want now.
• Without conversion tracking, you are buying clicks and guessing about customers.

How the auction actually works

Every time somebody searches, Google runs an auction in the fraction of a second before the page appears. It is worth understanding, because most wasted ad money comes from misunderstanding it.

Advertisers say what they are willing to pay for a click. Google then weighs that bid against how relevant the advert is, how likely it is to be clicked, and what the page behind it is like. Those things together decide who appears and in what order. Quality Score, the one to ten number you see in the account, is a report on the same signals rather than something the auction consults.

The practical consequence is that a well built account with a relevant landing page can outrank a competitor bidding more. Relevance is not optional. It is the lever that decides how far your spend goes.

You also do not pay your full bid. You pay roughly what was needed to beat the advertiser below you, which is why the amount per click moves around from one search to the next.

Where the ads can appear

People say Google Ads and mean search ads, but the account can run several very different things, and mixing them without noticing is a common way to waste money.

• Search. Text ads on the results page, shown in response to what somebody typed. This is the one with the clearest intent, because the person went looking.
• Display. Image ads on other websites across Google’s network. Nobody was searching, so it works for awareness and retargeting rather than immediate inquiries.
• YouTube. Video ads before and during videos. Same logic as display: attention you interrupted rather than attention you answered.
• Shopping. Product listings with a photo and a title, for stores with a product feed. Relevant if you run e-commerce.
• Performance Max. One campaign that runs across all of the above, with Google deciding the split. It can work well, and it gives you the least visibility into where the money went, so it suits accounts that already have reliable conversion data.

New advertisers are often opted into the Display network by default alongside search. If your search campaign has a strangely high click count and no inquiries, that is the first thing to check.

The parts of an account

• Campaign. The top container. Holds the settings that matter most: where the ads run, when, on which network, and how much is spent per day.
• Ad group. A tight set of related search terms with the ads that match them. The single most common fault is one ad group holding forty unrelated terms, so every searcher gets a vaguely relevant ad.
• Keywords. The searches you want to appear for. They come in match types. Exact shows for that search and close variants. Phrase shows when your term appears inside a longer search. Broad shows for anything Google considers related, which is much wider than most people expect.
• Negative keywords. Searches you refuse to appear for. This is where most of the savings live. A dental clinic should not be paying for “dentist salary” or “free dental mission”.
• Ads and assets. The headlines, descriptions and extra links. Google mixes headlines automatically, so each one has to make sense on its own.
• Landing page. Where the click goes on your website. Sending every ad to the homepage is the second most common fault, and it is expensive: the visitor searched for one thing and arrived somewhere general.

How bidding is set

You are choosing what Google should optimise towards, and the choice only makes sense once tracking exists.

• Manual CPC means you set the bid. Full control, and it does not learn.
• Maximise clicks buys as many clicks as it can. Useful for a brand new account gathering data, and dangerous for anything else, because clicks are not the product.
• Maximise conversions aims for inquiries rather than clicks. This requires conversion tracking to be working and honest, otherwise it optimises towards whatever wrong thing you told it to count.
• Target CPA and target ROAS aim at a specific cost per inquiry or return. They need a meaningful volume of conversions before the targets mean anything.

The pattern that works is to start simple, get tracking right, then move to conversion based bidding once there is something to learn from.

The words on the report

• Impressions. How many times your ad was shown.
• Clicks. How many times somebody clicked it.
• CTR, click-through rate. Clicks divided by impressions. A low rate usually means the advert does not match what was searched.
• CPC, cost per click. What you paid for one click. Useful, but not a goal in itself. A low CPC from people who never buy is not a win.
• Conversion. The thing you wanted: a form sent, a call, an order. This has to be defined and wired up, and it is described under tracking.
• Conversion rate. The share of clicks that became conversions.
• CPA, cost per acquisition. What one inquiry or sale cost you. The number most worth watching.
• ROAS, return on ad spend. Revenue divided by ad spend. Only meaningful for stores that can pass real order values back into the account.
• Impression share. How often you appeared out of the times you could have. Tells you how much room is left.
• Search terms report. What people actually typed, as opposed to the keywords you chose. The most useful screen in the account and the least read.

Where the money usually leaks

Five faults account for most of the waste in a poorly run account.

• Broad match with no negatives. Google will happily spend on searches with no commercial intent at all. Read the search terms report weekly and add negatives.
• Nationwide targeting for a local business. A clinic in Davao paying for clicks from Manila is paying for people who will never visit. Check the location setting as well: the default can include people merely showing interest in your area rather than people in it.
• Everything landing on the homepage. Match the page to the search or the click was wasted at the moment it arrived.
• No conversion tracking. Without it, the only thing you can optimise towards is clicks, and clicks are not the product.
• Nobody watching. Google’s automated recommendations will expand your reach whether or not that reach is useful. Auto applied recommendations should be switched off unless somebody is reviewing them.

Ads or SEO

Not a real choice for most businesses, but the honest version is this.

Ads are right when you need inquiries now, when you are testing whether a service sells before building pages around it, when it is seasonal, or when the organic results are dominated by directories you will not outrank soon.

SEO is right when you can wait, when the search happens all year, and when you want inquiries that continue after you stop spending.

There is a useful side effect too. A month of ads tells you exactly which searches produce inquiries and which produce nothing, which is expensive information that SEO would take a year to reveal. Most businesses that run both use ads to carry the first months while the organic work matures, then let ads cover the searches where they still cannot rank.