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Google Ads

Google Ads guides for operators who need to understand what is happening.

These guides are written for operators running their own Google Ads accounts or overseeing an agency running them. Read them and you will be able to audit your account for wasted spend, broken tracking, and the structural problems that quietly cost most accounts 20 to 40 percent of their budget every month.

Quick answer

This pillar covers how to audit and diagnose Google Ads accounts without agency access: conversion tracking integrity, search term review, match type strategy, campaign structure, and Performance Max architecture. It is written for business owners who oversee paid advertising, not for in-house specialists. If you need the framework applied to your specific account rather than the framework itself, the Conversion Second Opinion delivers written findings in 72 hours for $999.

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The collection

Guides in this collection

Published

How to audit your own Google Ads account (even if you did not set it up)

A step-by-step audit sequence for finding wasted spend, broken tracking, and structural problems in under 90 minutes.

Read guide →

Coming soon

Bid strategy audit

When Maximize Conversions stops working, and how to read the bid simulator without being misled.

Coming soon

Match type strategy

The decision that governs where 60 percent of a typical budget goes. How to choose per campaign, not per account.

Coming soon

PMax architecture

Asset group segmentation, audience signals, and the conversion event setup that decides what PMax can actually learn.

Limits of a guide

When you need more than a guide

A guide describes the pattern. Your account has a specific version of that pattern. The two diverge fastest in accounts running Performance Max across multiple markets with conflicting conversion events: one country sending Purchase, another sending Add to Cart as a proxy, a feed-only campaign pulling clicks away from brand search, and an agency-installed GTM container firing a legacy conversion ID that nobody has touched in eight months. The framework tells you where to look. The specific sequence of fixes, and the order that matters for your account, requires individual diagnosis.

If that describes your situation, the next step is the Conversion Second Opinion. Written findings, prioritized fix list, 72-hour turnaround, $999, no retainer. The diagnostic reads your actual account: conversion actions, search terms, asset groups, the GTM container, the bid strategies, and the structural decisions the last person made. You get the specific list, not the general framework.

Related pillars

Related topics

The engagement format

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