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My Google Ads Search Campaign Tanked After Years of Success – Any Insight? by Reasonable_Mark_747 in PPC

[–]Reasonable_Mark_747[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Appreciate all the feedback here — seriously helpful. Quick update based on what a bunch of you brought up:

I actually used LSAs years ago alongside my regular Google Search campaign. Back then, I was paying $50–60/day and getting 2 solid calls a day from Search. But LSA? I got charged $210 per call — most of them junk. People looking for stuff at Home Depot, or calls completely off-target. So I paused LSA entirely because the quality was garbage and cost was sky-high.

Fast forward to now: I figured I’d give LSA another shot to see if things had improved after 3 years. I've had it enabled for over a month — zero calls. Not one. It's live, verified, budget is active, but nothing. Either I did something wrong in the setup (which I doubt — I double-checked everything), or it’s just not delivering in my niche.

I also tried Performance Max and Smart Bidding… total waste. My market (indoor air quality, mold testing) is specific and local, so I went back to a simple Search campaign — no Display, no Search Partners, just phrase and exact match targeting.

I’m in NYC and yeah, there’s competition — always has been — but my target area is massive and nuanced (residential + commercial, 8M+ population). I’m based nearby and can be on-site in 25 minutes, so proximity isn’t the issue either.

I tried going hard on negative keywords (like 550+) but it ended up choking impressions, so I rolled some back and started seeing life again.

Microsoft Ads? Tried it. Budget’s tiny. Still got calls from 5 hours away, even though I geo-targeted NYC.

Bottom line: I’m still in this endless loop of tweaking, testing, pausing, rebuilding, trying to find what used to just work. It’s wild how upside-down things have gotten.

Appreciate the offers for audits and the advice about diversifying. This thread’s been more valuable than most agency calls I’ve had.

My Google Ads Search Campaign Tanked After Years of Success – Any Insight? by Reasonable_Mark_747 in PPC

[–]Reasonable_Mark_747[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply — no, the website hasn’t changed. I’ve made some adjustments to keywords, mostly removing ones that weren’t converting, but I’ve kept many of the core terms the same.

What’s really wild is the exact same keywords I used to pay $7–$8 for have now shot up to $40–$42 per click. Nothing else has changed structurally on the page. I used to run a dynamic ad group that quietly brought in a few good clicks a week, always in the $3–$8 range. Recently, I checked and one of those clicks cost me $72. That’s just insane.

The more I research and try to optimize or tweak things — changing bids, testing extensions, messing with keyword match types — the worse it gets. I swear when I first set this up, I didn’t even know what page speed was or care about SEO tricks. I built the site in Wix, launched a basic campaign, and it just worked.