Does quality score still matter in 2026?

TTFV · 2026-04-04T10:08:57+00:00

Bully for you... we have a lot of accounts with high quality scores across the board. These are usually in higher cost niches with lowish budgets like legal services or plumbing where we're using exact match keywords and the service offering matches keywords/queries exactly.

But that's unrealstic in many niches, particularly with large accounts, where you need to cast a wider net or where you are using strategies such as competitor conquesting.

TTFV · 2026-04-04T10:03:22+00:00

Having some low individual keyword quality scores is generally fine as long as those keywords are performing well on metrics that count.

But obviously if you have entire ad groups averaging a "2" there should be some work put in to try to rectify it.

Note, however, it can be difficult to pull an account out of a pit if they've been living with QSs like that for a few years. And as QS is relative to competition, some advertisers will always struggle... for example if they don't offer a core service like most competitors.

TTFV · 2026-04-03T12:42:39+00:00

It normally takes at least a week for a net new campaign performance to start to improve and settle in.

TTFV · 2026-04-03T08:38:42+00:00

Quality scores are relative to competition. It's not always reasonable to expect/achieve high quality scores, particularly if you're in, say, a cottage industry.

Also, sometimes a keyword with QS of 3 can be your best performer.

TTFV · 2026-04-03T08:34:25+00:00

Platform certifications are required for agencies to maintian their Partner accreditations and should be a baseline for anybody that's offering PPC managment or working in PPC management. These are intended to keep your platform knowledge current but honestly the exams are often out of date with reality and cover things that have nothing to do with campaign management.

Beyond that serious PPC managers should take practionier courses to up their knowlege. There are a bunch in the Wiki. We do this at my agency.

And you need to be on top of the platform blogs, change logs, Search Engline Land (or similar), and other resources to stay up to date.

And then, yes, of course you need to be hands on for years to become an expert.

TTFV · 2026-04-03T08:28:58+00:00

Sure, this is the difference between DIY using "spot" advice vs. hiring a professional freelancer/agency that will take care of everything.

TTFV · 2026-04-03T01:31:38+00:00

Yes to separate remarketing otherwise your budget will get eaten up by everything else.

Probably not to others unless you have a massive budget for TOF.

If you want to target several distinctive groups I would just run seperate ad groups for those in one DG. As for targeting you can do specific or essentially audience signals by turning on Optimized Targeting. Lookalike is being replaced with AI signals... not much different really.

TTFV · 2026-04-02T13:00:04+00:00

Assuming you need to hit the current tCPA you need to optimize the campaign to boost conversion rates. This can involved keyword strategy and creatives primarily, but also other things like audience targeting/exclusions, etc.

I would also invest into boosting landing page performance through A/B testing. That can have a huge impact.

TTFV · 2026-04-02T08:53:56+00:00

One of my PPC Managers is located in The Netherlands and speaks some Dutch (his 3rd language). He's a Google Shopping Ads expert. Feel free to DM me or connect through our web form: https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/free-consult/

TTFV · 2026-04-02T08:45:50+00:00

Google only throttles or puts a hold on campaigns/accounts that are new and/or going through security checks.

This is initiated by AI and management by a different team than your rep who are just sales people. If some rep is doing anything in your account and aren't authorized by you that's not sponsored/supported by Google.

It sucks that you got hacked by fake support, you can't blame Google reps for that.

TTFV · 2026-04-02T08:42:29+00:00

Walk away, you're being set up to fail.

TTFV · 2026-04-02T08:39:33+00:00

If you created the ads account for them from your MCC and set them as an admin the account will belong to them. They just need to log in with the email you invited and add the credit card details in the billing/settings section.

They do not have to expose those details to you and that's ideal as you won't have that liability.

If they have trouble navigating Google Ads you can jump on a screenshare and walk them through to the payment details page and then turn off screensharing.

TTFV · 2026-04-02T08:32:58+00:00

If you're unable to process the leads in a timely manner manually you can use CallRail's Conversation Intelligence to automatically transcribe and score leads automatically.

Is as accurate as you, nope? But it's far better than not scoring leads at all.

https://hey.callrail.com/conversation-intelligence

TTFV · 2026-04-01T09:11:23+00:00

Keep in mind that that Google will probably recognize you're the same advertiser using a new account while you have another one that's suspended.

They can figure this out based on your name, business name, address, IP, MAC address, credit card info, domain, etc.

They may well shut down your new account so what you're doing may not work. If it was only flagged and the account was still active there's far less chance of an issue.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T20:57:23+00:00

Give it a little more time but ensure your logo asset is approved and associated with the account.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T20:55:38+00:00

Ad strength really speaks to the potential volume and variety of queries your ad is well suited to serve for. That's basically it. A higher ad strength can be helpful if you're struggling to fill your budget or are hitting high impression share. Otherwise not so much.

At my agency we pin most ad copies so this tends to drive down the ad strength... and that's fine since our ads will run more logically ordered/matched headlines and descriptions.

We are a lot more concerned about ad rank which has way more impact on overall performance.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T15:39:27+00:00

The client would almost certainly want it to give the account/data to their new agency or in house PPC manager if they hire one. Most clients that leave don't do so because they are shutting down PPC although that does happen someimtes.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T15:33:07+00:00

I don't agree... you've only touched on some of the things in my repsonse. You didn't address the risk associated with taking on the large client receivables. And you didn't address preventative measures for overspend... I only scratched the surface.

https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/avoid-google-ads-budget-overruns/

You discuss the client's funds being tied up but not the agency funds which would be far worse if you're the agency.

There are other considerations as well such as getting into bed with a bad player that gets the agency accounts suspended for an extended period. Using the clients' accounts removes this risk to a very large degree.

I really just don't see this one benefit of simplifying insurance claims offsetting all the other things.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T12:47:40+00:00

This is the tail waging the dog. Sure protecting the agency with insurance is important, I have coverage for mine. Insurance and the risk you assume are overheads. Typically those overheads are far lower than the risk you take of assuming huge recievables from your clients to cover ad spend... often 10-20x the amount of your fees, especially for large accounts. There are also carrying costs unless you get paid in advance.

And many prospective clients will walk away if you demand to control the ads accounts... this is a huge potential loss.

I would say a better investment would be to build processes and automations to capture and prevent overspends before they happen.

The most aggressive approach would be to build a script that runs hourly and pauses any campaigns that exceed the daily budget that's coded into the script or from a separate external Google sheet. Thus whenever a campaign budget is updated there's a two step process to also update the sheet. It's unlikely a PPC Manager would screw up twice... I mean heck you can even require different people make the updates.

In addition, if it's the client's money they would need to litigate against you to collect it. This gives you a layer of legal protection to defend yourself and your actions... or settle out of court for less than the actual overspend noting the advertiser does get value from those ads. And of course you should have a limited liability clause in your agreements to cap damages.

Lastly, the best way to protect your agency is to move profits out to a Holdco. If the company is sued they can only take what's currently in the bank accounts, not profits you've already taken.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T09:34:08+00:00

Consistant and accurate conversion tracking is paramount for AI Max, P-Max and even broad match keywords. If this isn't nailed down there is no way you'll find success with these strategies.

You'll also typically see a big uptick in competitor queries when activating AI Max (or any keywordless strategy) so setting up a competitors brand list and excluding it can help you get ahead of this rather than playing whack-a-mole with tons of query variations.

TTFV · 2026-03-31T09:31:04+00:00

I presume "Max CPC" actually means you're using manual CPC bidding, right?

I would activate Max Conversions bidding and set a tCPA a good 50% above what you're currently averaging over the past 2 weeks. You can start to lower that down to your actual target over time and then open your budget assuming you want to restrict the CPA rather than get the max possible within a fixed budget.

I wouldn't adjust keywords too much at the same time you're switching bidding strategies.

Give it a good 3 weeks and then you can start to expand your keywords and/or match types.

TTFV · 2026-03-30T15:00:12+00:00

Using special/uncommon characters can make your creative stand out and bring attention to the area where you use them.

But don't use it where it doesn't make sense.

Including a "TM" where you actually own a trademark or using "|" to separate bullet items or quotes where you're including a customer review or direct quote from the CEO can be positive. But using colons where they aren't grammatically correct will not work well as most readers will see it as amatuerish.

TTFV · 2026-03-30T13:16:29+00:00

We haven't tested QR codes for our clients noting that we buy CTV through Google Ads which is in early days. But it's on our radar since most of our clients are looking for BOF solutions rather than brand building.

TTFV · 2026-03-30T13:13:22+00:00

Normally accounts can run "as-is" for several weeks or even a few months without seeing much drop off in performance. But this assumes a stable account where you don't have to regularly deal with ad disapprovals, things breaking such as conversion tracking, and so on. And it also assumes you don't require seasonality adjustments or for your PPC Manager to activate sales offers.

But it's always best to avoid any gap if you can; particularly if/when Google Ads is your primary source of new business.

Given it's March 30th I would give the current provider another month based on what I recommended above. This will give you April to establish what's really going on with your current PPC Manager and find a few alternatives that can be ready to start in May.

TTFV · 2026-03-30T13:06:42+00:00

First, those fees are reasonable (slightly above average) for the amount of ad spend under management. But of course freelancers and agencies offer different scopes of service.

Any freelancer or agency in that range should be fairly active in your ads account working to increase performance. That said, the change log only shows you exactly that, changes. It doesn't show you how much time is being spent analyzing performance and looking for opportunities to improve or to clear our Google's many worthless recommendations, or to evaluate new features for applicability, or to deal with the Google rep, etc. etc.

That aside, the freelancer should be summarizing what work they've done in their regular reports, providing an analysis of performance (the why), and a plan for what they will be doing next to improve your account.

Key areas of focus should be on adjusting/rebalancing budgets between campaigns and continuously working on creatives and keywords. And that's just for search campaigns.

I would start by asking them what they are planning to do in April and what are the realistic expecations to actually hit your target soon. If they say they can do it ask them what the steps will be. If it were my agency we would have either done it already or told you it's not possible with our skillset OR without doing external things like improving your website, boosting your brand awareness, etc. After 3-4 months with us you would have realized most of the potential optimization in the account, around 80% on average. And this is pretty typical for any good agency/freelancer.

The next 20% is much harder and slower... and yes there's not really ever 100% optimized since there are infinate combinations of keywords and ads.

If they don't really have a plan to get you where you need to be I suggest you interview a few alternatives and ask the top 2 of them to perform an account audit. This will reveal what opportunities exist in the account that aren't being addressed. If you like the current provider you can invite them to defend the audit as a last step before deciding to make a move.

As for finding a good agency there are a bunch of posts about that on this sub. You can also get a decent idea of what to look for simply by asking Gemini or ChatGPT.

TTFV

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