When a PPC campaign stops growing, increasing the budget can feel like the obvious next move. Sometimes, it is. But more budget will also buy you more of whatever your account is already doing: the useful searches, the irrelevant ones, the profitable products and the clicks that go nowhere.
In 2026 Google Ads is progressively automating more and more of the process. Bidding, targeting, query matching and campaign optimisation can all happen simultaneously at a scale advertisers couldn’t replicate manually.
But, this means that the inputs we give the platform are increasingly more important, not less.
That’s what we’re focusing on this month. So before adding £500, £5,000 or £50,000 to the budget, here are seven checks worth making.
1. What are people actually searching for?
The keywords in your account show what you’re targeting, the search terms report shows the searches that triggered your ads; and the two things can be very different.
Start with the terms receiving the most spend and ask yourself:
- Are they genuinely relevant to what we sell?
- Does the search term suggest commercial intent?
- Are you appearing for research led searches that are unlikely to convert?
- Are broad themes appearing that deserve their own campaign, ad group or landing page?
- Is expensive traffic (maybe a competitor) being generated by something you never deliberately wanted to target?
This is no longer just a Search campaign exercise, Google has expanded search-term visibility across PMax too giving advertisers more information about the demand their campaigns are generating.
Then look for opportunities. A cluster of searches around a specific use case, product, problem or question could influence everything from keyword structure and ad copy to landing pages and feed optimisation.
Our PPC Lead, Maria Johnston had this to say:
“Search terms are one of the first places I go when something feels off in an account. They tell you what Google has actually done with your targeting, rather than what you think you’ve told it to do. But we can’t just start excluding everything aggressively, a search term can be relevant and still not have enough data yet.”
Your 10-minute task: Sort search terms by cost. Pick out three terms to exclude and three worth investigating further. Don’t exclude a term just because it hasn’t converted yet; check its intent and the amount of data first.
2. Is your account optimising towards the right conversions?
This might sound obvious but it isn’t. We’ve all seen accounts reporting plenty of “conversions” while the actual business is wondering where all these supposed customers are.
A newsletter signup is not necessarily worth the same as a qualified enquiry, a form start isn't the same as a submitted form, a £20 purchase isn't the same as a £2000 purchase. And if a conversion action is set as a primary conversion Google can use it when optimising bids.
Although it does affect reporting; it's not just a reporting problem, it's an optimisation problem.
For lead generation, you can go further than simply telling Google whether someone completed a form. Qualified leads, closed sales and lead values can be fed back into your measurement setup so bidding has a better understanding of what the business actually values.
For eCommerce check that transaction values are being passed accurately, that duplicate purchases aren't being counted and that your account doesn't treat every sale as equally valuable when margins differ.
“If your tracking is wrong, your bidding isn't really "smart ", it is just confidently optimising toward the wrong thing. Before I judge a campaign I want to know exactly what Google has been told a successful conversion looks like”
Your 10-minute task: List the actions marked as primary conversions. For each one, ask: “If we got 100 more of these, would we be pleased with the business outcome?”
3. Do the numbers make sense outside Google Ads?
Google Ads should not be the only place you check whether Google Ads is working. Compare in-platform reporting with the systems closest to the actual business outcome:
- Shopify or your eCommerce platform
- CRM data
- Order exports
- Lead quality
- Sales data
- GA4
- Call tracking
- Offline conversions
The numbers won’t always match exactly due to differences in attribution models, conversion windows, reporting dates and consent choices. But what you’re looking for is whether the story makes sense.
If Google Ads (Google Partner) suddenly reports 30% more purchases but Shopify revenue hasn’t changed, investigate. If PPC leads increase dramatically while the sales team says lead quality has collapsed, investigate it. If GA4, the backend and Google Ads suddenly start moving in completely different directions, investigate it.
“One of my favourite checks is investigating the actual order level, if an account says 50 conversions, I use backend orders to see whether the purchases exist, whether revenue matches reasonably well and what journey the customers took to get there.”
Your 10-minute task: Pick one recent week and compare reported PPC conversions with the corresponding orders or leads in your own records. Note anything that needs investigating.
4. Does the landing page deliver what the ad has promised?
Imagine searching for a specific product, clicking an ad that promises it, then arriving on a broad category page where you have to hunt for it through 100 of a similar product.
That extra work can lose the customer you paid to bring in.
Check your highest spend ads and the pages they send people to. Is the product, service or offer immediately clear? Does the page answer the question behind the search? Can someone take the next step easily on a phone?
Maria Johnston notes,
“A PPC problem isn't always a PPC-platform problem, sometimes the targeting is doing exactly what it should but we;re paying to send very good traffic into a page that makes buying unnecessarily difficult. At that point we don't want to just add another keyword, we want to fix the journey.”
Your 10-minute task: Open three of your top spending ads on mobile. Follow each journey as though you’ve never heard of the brand. Write down the first point where you have to pause, search or guess. You might find something worth testing.
5. Which products are carrying your PPC performance?
Account-level ROAS can hide a lot. Imagine an account generating a 600% ROAS, which might look great but underneath that figure you find:
- Five products might be generating most of the revenue.
- Twenty products might be spending heavily without returning enough.
- Your highest-margin range might barely be receiving traffic.
- A best seller could be budget-limited while weaker products continue spending.
- One heavily branded product might be making the rest of the campaign look far healthier than it is.
This is why eCommerce PPC needs to move beyond campaign-level averages. Look at performance by product, category and ideally margin.
Then layer in actual business context: what’s in stock? What has the best margin? What does the business want to grow? What always sells repeatedly? What attracts new customers? The product Google finds easiest to sell isn’t automatically the product the business most wants to sell.
Your 10-minute task: Identify your highest spend products or categories. Which would you happily sell more of? Which need a closer look at pricing, feed quality, landing pages or spend?
6. Is your product feed doing the product justice?
In Shopping and Performance Max, your product feed isn’t just admin sitting somewhere in Merchant Centre. The feed helps Google understand what you sell. If titles are vague, important details are missing or images don’t show the product clearly, your campaigns have less to work with.
You need to review titles, descriptions, size, availability, brand, images and availability to name a few. But don’t optimise every title and description for a robot.
Look at the products that matter most. Would a person understand the product from its title alone? Is the most useful information there, such as brand, type, size or colour where relevant? Does the image make it easy to recognise?
“I think feeds get underestimated because they’re not exactly the most exciting bit of PPC. But with Shopping, the feed is doing a huge amount of targeting before anyone touches an ad. The best way to treat your feed is similar to intertwining keywords you're targeting into your Search ad copy, the attributes of the product ARE your keywords.”
Your 10-minute task: Review the titles and images of ten priority products. Flag anything a customer would find unclear when scanning search results.
7. Are you judging performance against the right goal?
ROAS, cost per lead and conversion rate are useful measures. None tells the whole story on its own.
A low-cost lead isn’t a bargain if it never becomes a customer. Strong ROAS may still favour products with thin margins. A campaign that introduces new customers might play a different role from one that captures people already looking for your brand.
Decide what each campaign is supposed to achieve, then check whether its reporting helps you answer that question.
Maria Johnston adds,
“I’m always cautious when someone gives me one KPI and asks whether PPC is “good” or “bad”. A ROAS figure without margin, campaign purpose, customer type or business context is just one piece of the story. The question I care about is: did the campaign do the job we actually created it to do?”
Your 10-minute task: Write one sentence for each major campaign: “We run this campaign to ___.” If you can’t finish the sentence clearly, start there before changing the budget.
The Takeaway:
There is more automation in PPC than ever. That doesn’t mean advertisers can pay less attention.
Before simply increasing spend check:
- What searches you’re actually paying for.
- What you’ve told the platform a conversion is.
- Whether those conversions exist in the real world.
- What happens after someone clicks.
- Which products are driving the best return.
- Whether your feed gives Google enough useful information.
- Whether you’re measuring the campaign against the job it was built to do.
You don’t need to do it all at once. Start with the two that could most affect your decisions: what your ads are showing for and what your account calls a success.
Once you trust those answers, it’s much easier to decide whether the next move is a budget increase, a better page, a feed improvement or a change in targeting.
You can sign up here: https://www.meetup.com/manchester-digital-thursday/events/316647085/?eventOrigin=notifications¬ificationId=%3Cinbox%3E%21427044090-1791100346596
