Guides

Google Ads, for accounts with real budgets.

How to test a change before it touches your spend, set bid targets without resetting a campaign, and find the money a large account leaks every month. Each guide answers one question and shows the steps.

Testing and experiments

Change a campaign without betting the campaign on it.

How to run a Google Ads experiment

Custom experiments step by step, from the Experiments page to applying the trial, plus which campaign types support what and the mistakes that invalidate a test.

How long should a Google Ads experiment run?

Duration is set by conversion volume, not the calendar. How to size a test from your own numbers, and the few cases where stopping early is right.

How to read Google Ads experiment results

What the experiment scorecard, its confidence intervals and the significance marker tell you, which metric decides the test, and what to do when nothing is significant.

Does editing a Google Ads ad reset its performance history?

What happens to a responsive search ad's ID, stats and review status when you edit it, which changes put Smart Bidding into Learning, and why a new ad alongside the old one is the safer route.

How to A/B test responsive search ad copy

Three ways to test RSA copy, from a new ad alongside the old to a split-traffic experiment, what asset reports can and cannot tell you, and the metric that decides.

Bidding and budgets

Targets, bid strategies and the budget settings that decide what you pay.

Target CPA vs Target ROAS vs Maximize conversions

Which Smart Bidding strategy fits a campaign depends on two things: whether your conversions are worth different amounts, and how many of them you get.

How to change a Target ROAS or Target CPA without breaking a campaign

Move the target in steps of about 10 to 20%, wait out learning and conversion lag between steps, and test the step in an experiment when the campaign matters.

'Limited by budget' in Google Ads: what it means and what to do

The status says the budget caps the campaign. Whether that is a problem depends on the efficiency of the spend it caps and on the share of impressions lost to budget rather than rank.

Broad match with Smart Bidding: when it works

Broad match hands query selection to the bidder. It pays off when the bidder has enough clean conversion data to tell good queries from bad ones, and not before.

How to test Performance Max

Performance Max has its own experiment types: an uplift test for whether the campaign adds anything, and asset experiments for its copy. Most other PMax changes cannot be split cleanly.

Wasted spend and audits

Where money leaks out of a Google Ads account, and how to find it.

Google Ads audit checklist for accounts spending EUR 10K+ a month

Eight areas to audit, in the order that matters, with what a bad result looks like and the report where you find it.

How to find wasted spend in the search terms report

The filters, the cost threshold and the negative keyword match types that turn the search terms report into money saved, without blocking terms that convert.

Presence vs Presence or interest: the location setting that leaks budget

The default location option shows ads to people outside your target area. How to tell whether that is costing you, and the few businesses that want it.

How to lower CPA in Google Ads without cutting volume

Seven levers in the order to pull them, why each one lowers cost per acquisition, and why dropping the target CPA hard is the one that costs you volume.

How to improve ROAS in Google Ads

ROAS is only as good as the value you send Google. Fix the values, bid on them, segment by margin, then move Target ROAS in steps and test the rest.

Measurement

If the conversion data is wrong, every optimization on top of it is wrong too.

Google Ads conversion tracking checklist

Ten checks that decide whether Smart Bidding is optimizing toward revenue or toward noise, in the order to run them.

AI and automation

What to hand to a machine, what to keep, and how to connect your own AI.

Should you turn off Google Ads auto-apply recommendations?

Where the setting lives, which auto-applied types change spend on a large account, which are safe to leave on, and how to find what was applied without you.

Google Ads MCP: connect Claude or ChatGPT to your Google Ads data

What an MCP server is, what Google's official one can and cannot do, the ways to point Claude or ChatGPT at an account, and what to ask once connected.

Using AI to manage Google Ads: what to automate and what to keep

Google's own automation, third-party tools and general assistants, sorted by what they risk: reading, drafting, proposing, and changing live spend.

Tool alternatives

Shortlists for people replacing a Google Ads tool.

Optmyzr alternatives for Google Ads: an honest shortlist

Why teams leave Optmyzr, what to check before you do, and six alternatives with the kind of team each one suits.

Opteo alternatives for Google Ads: who each one fits

Why teams outgrow or leave Opteo, what to check before switching, and six alternatives matched to the reason you are leaving.