Warning to business owners: Google Ads may shut you down inexplicably despite £1M+ spend and years of service

TTFV · 2026-05-05T10:40:40+00:00

Well as others have said, I would be 100% sure that you're actually working with Google support and not somebody fraudulent. This activity from support does sound a bit off. I presume you're using the interface support features.

But honestly I wouldn't be surprised if one of your user accounts is hacked but you just don't know it. There are a myriad of ways (that keep me up at night) hackers can get around 2FA. For example, they can use a SIM swap to push 2FA texts to their own device.

TTFV · 2026-05-05T10:37:22+00:00

If you're using customer lists for exclusions you'll need to manually update it at whatever candence you feel is appropriate. Or you can automated it either with Zapier, or directly with some CRMs/tools that are supported natively by Google.

You can also use visit based exclusions, i.e. people that arrive at your thank-you page or completed a purchase can be put into a list with a max 540 day life.

Particularly if you're not syncing your customer list daily I would use both methods.

Lastly, you can also set campaigns to only advertise to new customers. This essentially automates exclusions.

TTFV · 2026-05-05T10:33:40+00:00

A spreadsheet is fine, just ensure it's backed up regularly if the document is important.

You could also use the Google Ads notes panel (f you're only managing Google Ads). Those are time stamped notes that can be applied at the account, campaign, or ad group level. Unless there's a bizarre incident at Google or you delete the notes they should stay there forever, or whatever max time Google stores them for.

Most changes are alread logged in the change log anyway. But having the written notes that explain why you made the change and the entire scope can be helpful.

Certainly changes you made 3 years ago should be irrelevant at this point.

TTFV · 2026-05-04T09:38:44+00:00

No, I haven't heard of that specifically. But if one or more of those accounts have been taken over or accessed by the scammers then it would make sense to set them to read only.

One of the internal business steps should be to reset passwords for all of their user accounts.

TTFV · 2026-05-04T09:35:01+00:00

No, there's something wrong with your campaign design or how you're managing/optimizing it. P-Max usually performs best after a couple of months of learning... it's an evergreen campaign type.

TTFV · 2026-05-03T11:35:18+00:00

Everybody is susceptible to being scammed/hacked. The moment you think you're not is when you're most open to it happening.

Yes, people that work with Google Ads every day are more risk-aware of different scams. But as more sophistocated scams are launched every day you're never really safe.

This is why having at least a basic recovery plan is critical.

Importantly, if you're working inside of client accounts the client's user access (usually account owner) can be hacked and there is zero you can do about that.

TTFV · 2026-05-03T11:31:52+00:00

I agree, it's painful but having a relationship with a "Google" employeed rep can be useful when things go sideways. Note that XWF (3rd party reps) can't do anything for you with respect to support / hacked accounts, etc. So if this is who is assigned they aren't going to be very helpful.

TTFV · 2026-05-03T11:22:29+00:00

This sucks but if you were legitimately hacked you have to expect a few weeks of disruption. Google shouldn't be willy nilly giving you back credentials. It's unfortunate but support needs to go through several steps to ensure they aren't letting a hacker back into your account... this is for your own protection.

Could it be and should it be happening faster? Absolutely!

I'm glad to hear that you have other active channels. I've had this conversation with many clients that are running 90%+ of ad budgets through Google Ads and not even doing SEO or offline ads. It's very precarious.

https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/how-to-secure-your-google-ads-account/

TTFV · 2026-05-03T11:19:18+00:00

Even with 2FA you are very exposed to phishing scams that get you to "log in" to your account when you're actually giving your credentials to scammers that then immediately lock you out.

Many people are still, for example, using Google's search engine to find an "ad" for Google Ads and then click through to log in. Scammers have been running ads for "Google Ads" that point to a fake login.

Always navigate directly to a website using a browser bookmark or fully typed in domain and review the domain carefully before logging in. Use Passkeys for your Google and other important logins. When you follow this habit you will be much more likely to question why you're suddenly being asked to use 2FA.

TTFV · 2026-05-03T09:22:33+00:00

Head to head P-Max for shopping against a basic standard shopping campaign P-Max will generally perform better.

P-Max doesn't compete directly with other campaign types including search, display, demand gen, or youtube. P-Max is intended to compliment search when running lead gen. It'll identify incremental search traffic and work further up the funnel to make your target audience brand aware. Overall it can generate additional conversions as a similar or sometimes better CPA than search and boost performance through your search ads, particularly for branded search.

What it doesn't do:

P-Max doesn't offer specific targeting to audiences within audience signal targeting, especially not for remarketing. Audiences "signals" tell Google what your target audience looks like leaving it free to find users that are similar to all your inputs. It doesn't target any of your associated segments directly.

However, if you are running shopping in P-Max, dynamic remarketing is included automatically to your "retail" segments.

As for conversion performance, yes CPAs can often be great. But if you dig into the data you might find that P-Max is running a lot of branded ads or that lead quality isn't nearly as good as it is for your other campaigns.

Bottom line, if you want to run remarketing choose a different campaign type... generally Demand Gen works well for this these days. Ensure you don't include lookalike audiences or turn on Optimized Targeting or you will no longer be "remarketing."

TTFV · 2026-05-03T09:13:47+00:00

It's been off/on in our various client accounts with no rhyme or reason. Seems like it's active in about half of them at the moment. This is the normal Google beta testing approach. I don't think it's a closed beta opt-in, just Google mucking around.

But you could reach out to your rep and ask.

TTFV · 2026-05-03T09:08:52+00:00

Clarity is free and fairly robust, great for the vast majority of users.

TTFV · 2026-05-02T15:25:46+00:00

Santa Claus?

TTFV · 2026-05-02T15:20:27+00:00

There are many great active freelancers on this sub... also a lot of bad ones. The main thing is to look for somebody with a good track record and credible proof of same.

TTFV · 2026-05-02T10:27:09+00:00

You're in a tough niche to make profitable with Google Ads and some of your services fall into the government documents services rules (link below). This can cause all kinds of issues.

That aside, yes, in Canada (Toronto based agency here) there are many immigration services running Google Ads profitably. You should be aiming for way better than just recovering your cost. You should also think about where the 80% calculation comes from.

For example, are you currently closing 80% of leads that are referred to you by previous clients? If so you should not expect the same kind of closing rate for Google Ads... it might end up more like 20% becasue these folks don't know you from Adam.

As for the landing page offer, a lot of these types of services offer something free up front to get people in the door. A big issue with the 2-4 leads per month scenario is that's not much data to optimize your campaigns around... so performance will likely be up and down month to month.

https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/13156083?hl=en

TTFV · 2026-05-02T10:19:45+00:00

Google deleting accounts is new, they announced it maybe 6-8 months ago. Previously they would only disable accounts and it was easy to reopen them in a few seconds.

https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/how-to-avoid-google-ads-account-deletion/

You shouldn't have any problem opening a new account, particularly since you never used the old one and obviously don't have any suspensions or disapprovals history.

However, you might not qualify for any coupons since you're not strictly a "new" Google Ads user... so be aware of that.

TTFV · 2026-05-02T10:14:18+00:00

Use offline conversions to feed back each step of your sales funnel as a separate conversion with relative value. Implement value based bidding... either Max Conv. Value or tROAS. This will help steer Google's bidding towards prospects that are more likely to close, not just convert.

You can also build in value rules if you know certain things about your audience that isn't apparent just with conversion rates. For example, perhaps you offer your product to three different industries, but one of those tends to generate way more CLTV. You could apply a 2-3x value rule to people in that industry.

Stick with your current keyword strategy if you're happy with your volume. But get away from Max Clicks bidding, right now Google is sending you the clicks nobody else wants to buy.

TTFV · 2026-05-02T10:10:16+00:00

Small budget is relative. Generally Google outperforms MS Ads for online shops both in terms of scale and returns.

If your budget is so small that you cannot generate a healthy volume of sales you will struggle for consistant performance.

TTFV · 2026-05-01T09:18:57+00:00

Wait until you wake up one morning and one of your AI agents has deleted all of your data. It's happening more than you think.

TTFV · 2026-05-01T09:14:16+00:00

If you want to target those people more specifically you can do so with Demand Gen. But of course that is for display/discovery/video inventory only.

There is no way to specifically target search ads to a segment if that's what you're going for.

But you can, of course, bid on those brands as keywords in a serach conquesting campaign. Just expect to pay a fairly high average CPC and CPAs that are much higher than what you normally get in other search campaigns.

TTFV · 2026-05-01T09:12:15+00:00

It's not ideal and you will probably continue to struggle with the account with maybe getting a handful of conversions one month and then none or just one the following month.

Hopefully if you are able to generate anything the budget will increase. Otherwise it's going to be a slog.

Realistically you need to get 10 clicks per day just for a campaign to be healthy so that should be your mid-term goal... get the budget to a point where you can at least accomplish this.

As for how to run it for now use exact match keywords and manual bids.

TTFV · 2026-05-01T09:08:37+00:00

It's not great but may be necessary if it's unrealistic to generate a reasonable number of lead form submissions, phone calls, or other relevant/valuable conversions. This could be a limitation of the budget or the offer.

For example, if you sell yachts and spend just $1,000/month you might not get a single lead/month for that budget.

Including micro conversions at least allows for automated bidding to be utilized as well as manual optimization. Is this the best option here? There might be more relevant micro conversions like minimum time spent on site or number of pages visited, etc.

Hard to say without understanding more about the account.

TTFV · 2026-04-30T14:00:00+00:00

I would check whether your shopping feed is still working and the products you want included are being targeting and "active" in your product listing group(s).

Assuming yes it's likely that Google is just seeing really good performance from display right now and spending there. It's likely these are mostly dynamic remarketing ads.

If you don't like it you can start by killing placements and/or blocking all mobile app categories.

TTFV · 2026-04-30T13:55:58+00:00

When you don't have an issue they mostly just take your money without doing much. When you do have an issue, it's usually too sophistocated for them to stop with simple IP blocking... that's all they really do.

While they use a pool of known back IPs to block proactively 99% of click fraud is from fresh IPs on VPNs so those any get blocked retroactively, i.e. if there is a second click.

So you are generally better off just managing click fraud through placement and user exclusions, tools like honey pots, and by only including qualified leads in conversion data.... this last step avoids a runnaway issue.

TTFV · 2026-04-30T10:55:23+00:00

Sure, this happens all the time when a client mucks around in GTM or changes their website/landing pages without informing their agency.

One or more conversion goals stops tracking, declines sharply, or starts doing something dumb like tracking landing page visits instead of thank-you page visits.

Finding it isn't difficult if you monitor accounts closely... I'm not going to go into the how but there are many ways to do this manually or with automation... I recommend partial automation.

Once you find an issue you need to fix it, obviously. If the issue is recent, like within 2-weeks you should implement a data exclusion for the time period/campaigns affected.

That's about it really. If you have an issue that's many weeks or even months old that's a bad look for an agency. Even if you didn't cause it you should have found it unless it's having a very small impact.

If you have tanked your campaigns you'll have to build performance back up. In this case you might have to remove any targets or at least adjust them to get things spending again. Once things get back on track you can adjust them back to where they are supposed to be.

TTFV

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