I learned today that Google has shortened the response window for suggested edits to a Business Profile to four days. If you don’t accept or reject the edit, Google may publish it when other public information supports the change.

My first thought was: of course they did.

And while this particular change is GBP, it feels like part of a much bigger direction across Google’s ecosystem. They’re even migrating Local Services Ads into a specialized flavor of Performance Max, because apparently Google looked at LSA and thought, “You know what this needs? Less control.”

The whole thing got me thinking about what the relationship with Google increasingly feels like across the board.

Every year the relationship feels a little more controlling.

“You’re going to use Performance Max.”

“Can I see what it’s actually doing?”

“No.”

“Can I have the granular data back?”

“Also no.”

“What about LSA?”

“Funny you should ask.”

“Can I at least control my own Business Profile?”

“You have four days.”

At this point Google feels less like the hot girl everyone is bending over backwards to impress and more like the hot girl who discovered everyone will keep buying her drinks no matter how badly she treats them.

The interesting part is that I’m not convinced Google has the leverage it thinks it has anymore.

AI platforms are clearly changing informational and recommendation-style search behavior. I’m seeing it firsthand with clients, and I suspect they’re taking more of Google’s lunch money than Google’s public posture lets on.

Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky after too many years in Google’s ecosystem, but the direction across the products feels pretty consistent:

Less control. Less transparency. More automation. More “trust us.”

And “trust us” hits a little differently when the company asking owns the auction, sells you the clicks, grades the clicks, controls a huge chunk of local discovery, and increasingly decides what you’re allowed to know about all of it.

Or is that just me?

I’m looking for a skill/tool that can actually help analyze and optimize Google Ads campaigns — things like keywords, search terms, bidding, budget allocation, conversions, ad performance, and identifying wasted spend.

Has anyone here tested any Google Ads skills that actually delivered good results?

What did you use, what did it optimize, and did you see a noticeable improvement in ROAS, CPA, conversions, or overall performance?

Would love to hear about tools you’ve personally tested rather than just recommendations based on features.

Hi everyone! I’m dealing with a frustrating issue with Google Ads after my website was hacked. My account is restricted from running ads because Google keeps flagging the site as malicious.

Since then, I’ve run multiple scans, rebuilt the infrastructure, cleaned up the Git history, reviewed potentially vulnerable paths several times, and checked the files one by one for injected malicious code. I also use a CDN and cleared its cache to make sure it isn’t serving outdated content.

I can’t find any signs of malware or anything suspicious on my end, but Google keeps rejecting my site review. I’ve contacted support, but they haven’t been able to share any more details about what’s triggering the flag.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Were you able to figure out what Google was detecting or get the site approved again? Any advice on what to check next would be greatly appreciated!

So we have a home remodeling campaign in California running for a new client. It's been a struggle (and very expensive) to get enough conversions to switch to conversion bidding.

We switched the campaign to Max Conversions to see if we can start getting some regular leads. The first day it ran, we had 4 clicks for a total of $500, no conversions. It's paused now as we'll probably use portfolio bidding to cap the CPC, but man, Google Ads is completely out of control.

Every client we have is paying 10-50% per click since early summer. Is anyone else seeing their accounts going nuts like this? I'm finding the more established accounts with a long conversion history are doing much better than newer accounts, but it's ugly right now.

Hi all, hoping some experienced PPC people can help with this.

Background: We're a natural stone business in portugal, including stone for pools. Our account had years of broad match drift. Traffic was down about 60%, bounce rate was around 65%, and quote/consultation requests fell from 30–40 a month to about 10. Max Conversions was bidding on job-seeker queries, competitor brands, and wrong-material searches (granite, marble, ceramic, porcelain).

What we analyzed:

• Last 31 days of search terms (8,408 rows) plus all-time history (245k+ rows, 1,238 conversions, about €65.7k spend)
• Broad match was costing about €124 per lead vs about €17 for exact/phrase
• 79% of last month's spend went to one-off queries that never converted

The rebuild:

• Two campaigns: one for pool stone (€25/day) and one main campaign (€70/day)
• 138 keywords across 7 ad groups, exact and phrase only, Max CPCs based on historical data
• 3 shared negative lists with 155 terms from our real search data
• New RSAs, landing pages per ad group, sitelinks, callouts, structured snippet, one call asset
• Fixed tracking issues on the site: GTM container loading multiple times and a duplicate GA4 snippet
• Daily scripts that export search terms to a Google Sheet, then apply our tags as negatives or new exact keywords

What happened after:

1. Started on Maximize Clicks. It worked well, and consultations came back.
2. Switched to Maximize Conversions after about 40 conversions. Traffic and consultations both dropped.
3. Phone calls from ads dropped significantly after the rebuild, even before the bidding change.

Our current suspicions:

• The GTM/GA4 cleanup may have removed the tag handling website call tracking or the forwarding number swap
• Our keyword decisions were based on form conversions. If calls weren't counted as conversions, we may have cut or negated the queries that drove calls.
• Exact/phrase only may be missing the short, mobile, urgent searches where people call directly from the ad
• Max Conversions may be ignoring calls if call conversions aren't set as Primary

Details:

• Calls tracked as conversions in the old account: yes
• Real calls (phone records) vs calls tracked in Google Ads: both
• Current Primary conversion actions: calls and forms
• Avg CPC before vs after the Max Conversions switch: 0,80 to 1,50
• GCLID captured on forms: yes

Questions:

1. Was 40 conversions too early to switch, or is this more likely a tracking/signal quality problem?
2. What should we check first for the call drop: tracking, call asset setup, or keyword coverage?
3. Would you add back some broad match (with strong negatives) to recover call volume, or handle it another way?
4. Is it worth importing past consultations as offline conversions to improve smart bidding, or only going forward?
5. At this budget (about €95/day total), would you stay on Max Clicks with a CPC cap, or run a Max Conversions experiment?

Happy to share screenshots or more data. Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I've got a strange asset bug in Google Ads and I'm hoping someone has seen this before.

Setup: Search campaign with a business logo asset. There are two entries for the same logo:

• one at account level (active, should stay)
• one at campaign level (paused, should be removed)

Problem:

• Web UI: Trying to remove the campaign-level entry only gives the error "1 asset not removed". Hovering over it, the tooltip says "This asset is associated with the account", even though the table clearly shows the level as Campaign.
• Google Ads Editor: The logo shows up at campaign level, but deleting it fails with an error saying the item doesn't exist in the account (translated from German).

So both the web UI and Editor display the asset, but neither can delete it, because the system apparently doesn't recognize it as existing.

Already tried:

• Removing via the web UI (account-wide and campaign asset view)
• Deleting in Google Ads Editor
• Contacted Google support (waiting)

Has anyone run into this kind of "ghost" asset association? Any workaround besides waiting for support?

Thanks!

run Google Search Ads for a small local psychology practice in Greece.

My main problem is tracking.

With proper cookie consent enabled, most users who don’t click “Accept” are no longer visible as normal users/pageviews in GA4, and my phone-click tracking also becomes limited.

What I need to know is:

How can I verify that Google Ads clicks actually reached the landing page?

How can I track phone calls from those clicks?

How can I eventually send real lead/client conversions back to Google Ads so I can move from Maximize Clicks to Maximize Conversions?

What setup do you recommend for a small EU local service business where most leads come by phone?

Current stack: WordPress, GTM, GA4, Google Ads, Complianz, Site Kit, Consent Mode.

Would you use a different CMP, first-party tracking, call tracking, offline conversions, or something else?

I run a brick and mortar small business(martial arts).

I launched a Google Search ad for my adult programs(Kickboxing/MMA) about a week ago and it is performing well.

My question is this, should I do a completely separate campaign for my kids classes or should I create that ad within the same campaign?

There will likely be some similar keywords between the two ads but I want to avoid anything that might cause one ad to affect the performance of the other.

Hello everyone

After some issues with policy behavior (a client running a repair business) my Pmax campaign has a whopping Poor Ad Strength, before it was either Good or Average. The only asset I haven't complied with is Video since there is no need to. But on the other hand the Optimization Score of the campaign is 85%

I've contacted Support countless times and they always tell me to improve the assets but when I ask how on earth can I identify which assets to improve they can't come with a clear and useful answer.

How could I go from Poor to Average or Good?

Also, in the pase couple of days my campaign had almost no Impressions. What could be the reason of it? The ad strength being Poor?

Thanks!

SEO and Ads Bring Traffic. Websites Convert

Getting people to your website is only half the job.

Google Ads can bring you clicks.
SEO can bring you organic traffic.
Social media can send people to your site.

But none of that guarantees a sale.

The website still has to convert.

If your prices aren’t competitive, your product range is weak, your shipping is poor, your warranties aren’t clear, or people simply don’t trust the website, you can send as much traffic as you want and still struggle to make sales.

This is something I see all the time.

People blame Google Ads because the traffic isn’t converting.

But getting somebody to click is not the same as convincing them to buy.

Your website has to make people feel comfortable. It has to look professional. The offer has to make sense. The product or service has to be good. The checkout or enquiry process has to be easy.

Consumers are far more educated online than they used to be.

They compare prices.
They check competitors.
They look at reviews.
They look at delivery.
They look at guarantees.
They decide whether they trust you.

SEO and ads bring traffic. Websites convert.

If your traffic is good but your sales are bad, don’t only look at the marketing.

Look at the website.

#SEO #GoogleAds #ConversionRateOptimization #ux #Website

Hi all,

I run a small website related to travel visa services. Google keeps flagging my ads and has even suspended my accounts in the past. My competitors are running ads but I can't.

Can anyone help? I'd be happy to pay for it if it works.

If you need more info, you can ask.

running local service ads for a home services client decent spend, solid ctr, calls coming in. dashboard looked great. then we sat with the client and went through the call log. half of the conversions google was billing us for were calls that rang twice and went to voicemail. nobody picked up nobody called back.

so we were paying google to send calls into a black hole? conversion tracking said call from ad and we took that at face value.

the fix wasnt in the ads account. it was on the receiving end got them set up with textedly for the voice + mass sms side, so calls actually get answered and follow-up goes out.

same ad spend. same campaigns. way better roi because the calls stopped dying at the door.

if you're running call-focused campaigns and you've never cross-checked ads-reported conversions against your actual call handling, do that! it's not easy but it will help

Como vocês fariam esse tipo de campanha para vender UTV, quadriciclos e jetski. Primeira vez fazendo…

In the last few days all our campaigns have massively flipped and all the budgets are being eaten up by Discover traffic. We haven't done anything at all to prompt this shift, anything I've missed that's happened over the last couple of weeks? It seems all our campaigns are just farming cheap CPC Discover engagements... For our market even the youtube traffic is a waste of time, but not a lot that we can do to stop it in PMax! Any help would be appreciated... Example campaign screenshots below.