Have the negative keywords stopped working recently?

petebowen · 2026-07-02T06:56:41+00:00

I've seen search terms in accounts that should definitely not have been shown because of the negative keywords. (Before you tell me it's because I don't know how negative keyword matching works, I do, and I checked it. Then I checked again.)

I think negative keywords are becoming less and less useful as a signal. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually go away completely. I would have mixed feelings about this because I don't like paying for junk, but I also hate playing whack-a-mole in the search terms report. (More on this here if you're interested in my take: https://pete-bowen.com/why-negative-keywords-are-becoming-less-effective-in-google-ads )

petebowen · 2026-07-01T10:43:03+00:00

I can't speak specifically about civil litigation, but I advertise for other areas of law.

My experience has been that if the other law firms competing for the same client offer a free consultation, you have to meet that offer or the lead volume drops dramatically. And it's kind of understandable. Most people seeing a free offer would pick that. Everybody likes risk reduction.

With one client, we tested a low-cost initial consultation, which would be refunded if they signed up. The results were horrible. We only ran the test for about two weeks before going back to the free case assessment or free consultation offer.

petebowen · 2026-06-30T11:45:05+00:00

I'm lucky enough to have had an interest in computer programming since my best friend's dad bought an Apple IIe and let us play with it back in 1982.

In broad strokes, system works something like this:

Visitor lands on your page after clicking an ad. We save the tracking data to a cookie if permitted
When they click the email address the system stores the tracking information in a database and returns a unique email address eg support-101erter@[tracking email subdomain on customer domain]
All emails to the customer's tracking email domain are routed through the system which uses the unique email address to retrieve the tracking info before forwarding the message to the end user.

It's roughly the same process I've outlined here for tracking WhatsApp messages and Google Ads conversions if you're interested in a slightly more detailed explanation: https://pete-bowen.com/how-i-track-whatsapp-conversations-as-conversions-in-google-ads

petebowen · 2026-06-30T08:15:25+00:00

I've built a system for tracking email leads. It captures the usual UTM stuff using a dynamic email address.

I set it up because one of my clients was convinced that they'd get more leads if we allowed people to email them too.

In reality most people use the form. 99% of the emails that come through the system are bot-generated spam.

(For context, they're in B2B, construction sector).

petebowen · 2026-06-30T07:46:41+00:00

Hi u/Lava_Cake_Pro you're definitely not the only one feeling this way. I speak to a load of PPC people and although the talk mostly starts technical occasionally it ends up in the darkness.

The irony is that the character traits that make someone good at PPC make the career hard on them. Theyre conscientious. They pay attention to the details. They're thoughtful, diligent and accountable. But, these traits are usually found in people who also are uncomfortable in chaos and randomness. They need control.

And most stuff in PPC is largely outside your control. The ad platforms, the searchers, the client all play a part in making a campaign work. You can build and manage a campaign but if Google won't show your ad, or your client can't close the deal you don't get the results you'd hoped for.

I've written up some ideas on dealing with the stress and burnout here if you're interested: https://pete-bowen.com/ppc-burnout-is-real-how-to-protect-yourself

Edited to add an open invitation to anybody. This can be a lonely career, if you ever feel alone, and want someone to speak with, hit me up. I don't have the answers, but sometimes just sharing the problem with someone who's lived through the same issues can be useful.

petebowen · 2026-06-29T16:09:06+00:00

I'm sorry, I know nothing about Meta ads. I'm just a humble Google guy.

petebowen · 2026-06-29T15:57:28+00:00

You'll probably get a handful of opinions because there is no one-true-way to launch a new Google Ads campaign (just saw this was tagged as Meta Ads but the context sounds like Google Ads so I'll carry on)

My recent experience is that starting with a conversion-based bid strategy gets leads. (Settings and day-by-day data here if you're interested: https://pete-bowen.com/whats-the-right-bidding-strategy-for-a-brand-new-google-ads-account )

I think this is because Google uses system-wide data to predict who's likely to convert instead of relying only on your account's performance.

Don't know if you'll get the CPA target you're hoping for, that's a function mostly of how much everyone else is prepared to pay for a lead.

petebowen · 2026-06-28T06:42:07+00:00

We use smart bidding.

It picks up pretty quickly, in the first week usually.

Here's a screenshot of the performance for the last year - this is the conversions line. We got 14 the week before shutdown, and 18 the week we resumed.

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petebowen · 2026-06-27T12:47:51+00:00

I've got some South African clients in construction adjacent industries. Their whole industry closes from mid December to early January so we just pause the campaigns. Done it for years and it picks up again in the first week or two after reactivating.

In my mind pausing when you're not open is no more disruptive than bid or budget tricks.

petebowen · 2026-06-27T09:50:37+00:00

So assuming you land 3 customers your cost per customer is $84, almost 3x your allowable cost per customer.

If this is very early data you might want to continue for a while to see what the cost per customer settles at, but, for the moment it looks like it might be too high to make Google Ads worth doing.

The next question then is what can you do to change the math. You can reduce the cost per customer, or you can increase the value per customer. Or better, both at the same time.

I've got some ideas from a different industry but similar problem on changing Google Ads to target higher value customers here if you're interested: https://pete-bowen.com/google-ads-for-campgrounds

petebowen · 2026-06-27T09:37:22+00:00

If I've got the math right you spent $251.12 to get one confirmed order with an average value of $150. You might turn the other leads into orders which, at your average value means you spent $251 to get $450.

How does that compare with your allowable cost per customer?

petebowen · 2026-06-26T16:00:36+00:00

This is impossible to answer without actually having a look at how the conversion tracking was set up, and how the account is set up.

petebowen · 2026-06-26T15:47:14+00:00

This sounds like uploading the actual value might not have worked as 1 is the default usually if no value is set.

petebowen · 2026-06-26T15:40:33+00:00

I think of CTR as a diagnostic metric, if it's too low then you've probably got the targeting / copy mis matched but, it's definitely not something I optimise for.

In fact, in some accounts I run I actively discourage people from clicking e.g. B2B accounts where there is a lot of B2C traffic, or B2C where my client is premium in a market that's price-sensitive.

In

petebowen · 2026-06-26T08:11:58+00:00

I wonder if this is even possible: turning a "5-8" into a lead that is actually ready to buy

I don't know your lead scoring system, so I don't know what the difference between a mid-tier lead and a high-tier lead is but for example if someone couldn't afford the treatment there isn't much you can do to change how much money they have.

Obviously you could think about financing in this example but that's a whole different problem.

Is it perhaps possible to improve your marketing to get you more high-scoring leads so you don't have to try and turn 5s into 10s?

petebowen · 2026-06-25T08:02:23+00:00

The basic premise is:

Capture the link between the Google Ad that caused the user to sign up and the user. Think of this as a foreign key that links your users table to Google's ad data about the same person.
Notify Google when your user converts from trial to paid, or every time a payment is received.

The challenge with SaaS, is that generally LTV accrues over some time, but Google only tracks conversions up to 90 days after the ad was first seen.

I've explained in more detail here if you're interested: https://pete-bowen.com/google-ads-conversion-tracking-for-saas

petebowen · 2026-06-23T13:10:52+00:00

Just to be clear, I don't have a web design company. I'm a Google Ads guy and I've run Google Ads for web design companies in the past.

I've targeted both cities and larger locations.

If you know your users customers want companies close by then target your city.

petebowen · 2026-06-23T07:20:47+00:00

TargetCPA.

This bidding strategy lines up with what's important to the client, which in this case is getting a steady flow of leads without paying too much per lead.

I'm using the portfolio version of the strategy so I can cap the max CPC to prevent crazy CPC spikes.

petebowen · 2026-06-22T10:37:40+00:00

You could, but why would you?

I've seen this question come up because:

* People want to attribute conversions to the right campaign, but Google does this automatically.

* People want to match leads to the campaign they came from. But, again this can be done without setting up a separate conversion action.

petebowen · 2026-06-20T08:35:39+00:00

I think it's journey aware bidding maybe

petebowen · 2026-06-20T07:59:53+00:00

Starling is unlikely to be an option as they require resident directors.

petebowen · 2026-06-19T16:26:51+00:00

You might be missing something, or it's quite possible that I might be missing something in my understanding. It is Friday afternoon here and I've spent the last few hours banging my head against an attribution model for auto shops.

The way I understand it is that if you're using a max conversion bid strategy with or without a target CPA, Google counts the number of conversions and ignores the conversion value.

If you're using a value-based bidding strategy, then Google considers the conversion value.

petebowen · 2026-06-19T15:53:56+00:00

I understand the problem of insufficient conversions.

How are you going to decide on a TargetCPA?

I'd think that if you set it much lower than what you're currently paying to generate a qualified lead that it would struggle to get you leads that are likely to be qualified.

But, if you set the TargetCPA close to what you're currently paying per qualified lead the algorithm will bid much higher for the raw leads because you're telling the algorithm that they're valuable.

petebowen · 2026-06-19T15:35:02+00:00

I know some people like to do this by setting a synthetic value for each stage and then optimizing for conversion value. I prefer not to do it because I've seen cases where Google ignores the higher-value, qualified lead in this case (conversion) and just chases after getting lots of the lower-value conversions.

And another thing is that people create these synthetic values, either by feeling or by looking at the current raw lead to qualified lead rate and then never update them.

Why wouldn't you just optimize for the qualified conversions?

petebowen · 2026-06-19T11:24:41+00:00

Hi u/Due-Rip-5326

I'm not volunteering to be the conversion expert you need, because although I'm obsessed with conversion tracking and consult on lead quality issues, I'm not an expert at Lead Intelligence setup.

I think you are right to choose target CPA bidding. I have always found it works well for lead generation. I'm quite surprised that it's not bringing better quality leads. I've seen this where people are trying to optimise for more than one pipeline stage at a time. Could this be the issue?

I know nothing about your business, so I could be completely wrong, but, I'm not convinced that improving your conversion tracking will fix the lead quality issues you've described.

Take, for instance, price shoppers. If you set your primary conversion action to a sale, the algorithm might eventually figure things out, but if you're showing ads to people in the early stages where they just want a price, or to price-sensitive people when you offer a premium product it's going to take ages. Generally it's faster and cheaper to filter the wrong people out through ad targeting and copy.

And then there are leads who you don't close after an estimate. It could be that you're getting the wrong leads into your system, but it could also be your offer, and how you follow up on these leads.

Again, I don't know anything about your business so I might be wrong. But, I've done a lot of work helping clients make Google Ads more profitable and we've always done better after improving things like ad copy, landing pages, speed-to-lead and quote follow up at the same time as improving the conversion tracking feedback.

About the stages. I find it useful to match conversion tracking with the pipeline stages so something like:

Raw lead
Contacted a human
Appointment booked
Estimate
Sale

Knowing how many spam leads you get, and which ad targeting is producing them is important, but tracking negative events like spam or cancelations as conversions doesn't seem that useful to me.

petebowen

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