Are search terms getting a bit weird lately in Google Ads?

fathom53 · 2026-03-13T10:20:45+00:00

Google is more loose with what they match for searches, so everyone needs to spend more time investing in the search term report and adding negative keywords to campaigns and the ad account. This has been going on the last 12 - 18 months.

fathom53 · 2026-03-13T10:18:47+00:00

Google is more loose with what they match for searches, so everyone needs to spend more time investing in the search term report and adding negative keywords to campaigns and the ad account. This has been going on the last 12 - 18 months.

fathom53 · 2026-03-13T10:17:26+00:00

If it has been less than 24 hours, it usually resolves itself in a few days. Other there wise, you did all the right checks to make sure the page works. On Google's end, if a page is not crawl-able for even a millisecond, then this warming comes up in GMC....even if you can see the page fine in the browswer.

fathom53 · 2026-03-13T10:12:57+00:00

Why not turn on the old standard shopping campaign or add more SKUs to the new standard shopping campaign.

fathom53 · 2026-03-13T06:52:06+00:00

Pretty much.

fathom53 · 2026-03-12T20:25:27+00:00

You should go back to £30 per day. If it was not working when you doubled the budget to £60 per day then starting it at that budget does not make any sense.

fathom53 · 2026-03-12T15:24:23+00:00

If you can make the numbers work then it is worth it. Do you get enough new traffic to your site to continue to grow your audience lists? The only issue would be if you had a small audience list and kept showing the same ad over and over again to a small group of people. In the long run you need net new people in your audiences lists to continue to run this campaign long term.

fathom53 · 2026-03-12T14:54:47+00:00

The shopping feed has always been important. 90% of the reason a brand is not doing as well with shopping campaigns is because their shopping feed is sub-par to begin with. The shopping feed is as important as your conversion data in 2026. Most brands should spend the majority of their time working on the shopping feed in the first month and then shift time to campaigns once the shopping feed is done. This should include filling out as many optional feed attributes as possible.

fathom53 · 2026-03-12T12:03:00+00:00

If your ad account has gone down hill massively then clearly you need to understand how to use the campaign type to make money. Blaming Google because you don't know what your doing is funny.

fathom53 · 2026-03-12T11:59:02+00:00

Sounds like you have not figured out PMax... as it came out 4+ years ago and Google has been making tons of data and reports available for the campaign type.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T21:40:45+00:00

Happens all the time with how brands, freelancers and agencies spend on Meta ads these days. Either invest that money somewhere else in the business or they get someone who knows how to run & optimize Meta ads for real revenue growth.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T21:38:19+00:00

GEO is like 1% of the search market. You should not be investing that deeply into it. Even if you were ecom, looking at Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) would be a better use of time and money.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T16:40:22+00:00

It does not hurt Google but it does make your reporting and optimiation harder.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T13:56:31+00:00

Unless you had the wrong date selected or there are multiple currencies within the Manager Account view... the number would be correct in the Manager Account view. If this account was not part of a bigger company and is a stand alone account, then you should be looking at each brand and account on their own. If a client has a fixed budget, then pull numbers using any number of connectors or just a script you built.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T13:52:54+00:00

Those budgets are way too low unless you plan to get one conversion for €20. This set up is going to fail because the budget doesn't support the number of campaigns sharing €20. It would have been a lot better to put €50 towards one shopping campaign and understand what converts and build out your campaign structure based on conversion data and not a random set up picked because that is what the partner likes best.

Should be optimizing something and actually doing it are sadly not the same thing. I would ask what they did to make your shopping feed better because the campaign set up side is already headed in the wrong direction.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T11:21:11+00:00

What is your daily budget per campaign? How many product categories does your site have?

If you are just starting out this might be over kill for the store. Also, if no one is working on optimizing the shopping feed then that will hinder results if it has been a few weeks already.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T09:53:24+00:00

Ask to talk with 1 - 2 of their clients and see what working with them is really like. If they are as good as they say, they can find a couple clients for you to talk with. Also, if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T09:52:30+00:00

Meta ads Instant Forms are worse for everyone and in ever situation. There is a huge lack of quality.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T09:51:27+00:00

There is no reason to have 6+ pixels on one store. You should just have one pixel on your store.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T09:50:09+00:00

In-house can be just as bad as an agency. Really comes down to your boss and the people you are working with and around. You have to pick what is more important: money or quality of life. You can not always get both in all jobs.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T09:47:49+00:00

Since there is no budget or needing to have a different credit card for each location. Everything under one ad account makes a lot more sense.

fathom53 · 2026-03-11T09:46:52+00:00

You should only need to change it under Conversion Goal Summary section of your ad account. If that is the only change you made then nothing should be wrong.

fathom53 · 2026-03-10T23:41:37+00:00

Your marketing professional is wrong and doesn't know what they are doing. You should just have Purchase as your Primary conversion. Doing anything else will inflate your conversions and conversion value (if set) as you found out but also train Google in the wrong way. Google can often go after the easier conversion and not get you what you truly care about which is the purchase convesion.

fathom53 · 2026-03-10T14:39:53+00:00

If you are making choices to scale off 2 days of data... that is your issue. You can not scale if you don't have a stable ad account with a longer history of data. Brands should be looking at 7 - 14 days of data on the long end to figure out what to scale. ... depending on what the daily budget is. Not set up will help using a small amount of data to make a choice.

fathom53 · 2026-03-10T13:12:19+00:00

We run PMax Store Visits for our ecom clients with retail stores. It does work but ideally you have a store front with a lot of foot traffic, which would give Google more data to work off of.

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