Google Ads Help advises checking whether actions other than purchases are set as Primary. When another action is Primary, the campaign optimizes toward a number that may have nothing to do with revenue.
Spend in Google Ads is growing or flat, and orders in your e-shop admin aren't moving. Before you touch the campaigns or start rethinking your agency, go through six areas: tracking, market and season, feed, targets, structure and website.
For each area, I'll show the symptom and where in the interface you'll find it. I'll also tell you what you can check without an audit. The checks only cover Google's tools, so I'm leaving Sklik aside.
Tracking and market: is the problem even in the campaigns?
1. Tracking
Symptom: conversions in Google Ads don't match orders in your e-shop admin. The account reports zero, or more conversions than you actually got orders.
Check: every conversion action's settings include a Conversion action optimization section with the choice of Primary or Secondary (observation only). Primary actions go into the Conversions column and drive bidding. Secondary actions only show up in the All conversions column. For purchases, also check the counting method: for sales, Google Help recommends Every.
When comparing with your admin, expect the data to be shifted. Google Ads attributes a conversion to the date of the click, while other tools use the date of the conversion.
The sample audit of one account shows what broken tracking looks like in numbers. It's an entertainment center with online bookings: over 90 days, ~$1,220 went into ads and the account recorded 0 bookings. Four days after the tracking fix, it showed 28. If conversions are missing because of consent status, continue with the article on conversions missing after users decline consent.
2. Market and season
Symptom: performance is dropping, but nothing changed in the account.
Check: in Google Ads, open Insights and go to the year-over-year trends. They show Google search volume for the last 28 days against the same 28 days of the previous year. A quick comparison in Google Trends gives you a second view: it compares interest with the same period last year and shows whether it follows the usual seasonal cycle. If demand also dropped in the same weeks last year, look for the cause in the market first, and only then in your campaign settings. How an audit separated weakening demand from changes in the account is shown in the Matchaday.sk case study.
Merchant Center feed and targets: when campaigns don't get impressions
3. Feed and Merchant Center
Symptom: your products don't show in Google Shopping or Performance Max, or only part of the catalog shows.
Check: in Merchant Center, open the Products list and look for Limited and Not approved in the Status column. The Needs attention tab lists issues for individual products. Products with a warning keep showing, but their performance may be limited. Products marked Not approved stop showing on Google.
Google's help article on Shopping campaigns that aren't running adds two more checks: whether the Merchant Center account is suspended and whether it's linked to Google Ads. You'll find the fixes in the overview of the ten most common reasons for disapproved products. Without approved products, a Shopping campaign has nothing to show.
4. Targets and bidding
Symptom: the campaign spends less than it could, or impressions dropped after you tightened the target.
Check: in the Campaigns section, use the Status filter and select Limited by budget. Alongside that, watch Search lost IS (budget). It shows the share of time your ads didn't show on the Search Network because of a low budget. Search lost IS (rank) measures the same thing for low Ad Rank in the auction.
For the Target return on ad spend (ROAS) strategy, Google Help warns that setting the target too high can limit traffic from your ads. I break down how target and budget interact in the article on bidding changes for limited budgets. Where to get the target from is covered in the calculation of target PNO from your margin (in Czech).
Structure and website: which searches you pay for and what the customer sees
5. Structure and search terms
Symptom: spend is growing, orders aren't.
Check: open the Search terms report. It lists the sufficiently frequent searches that triggered your ads. Add less relevant terms as negative keywords. For Performance Max, the report is under Campaigns, in the Insights and reports section.
You separate brand searches with Brand exclusions. In Performance Max, they also apply to Shopping and YouTube search.
Treat Quality Score in the Keywords report as a diagnostic. It isn't used in the auction, and Google Help doesn't consider it a key performance indicator. The score has three components: expected clickthrough rate (CTR), ad relevance and landing page experience.
At one e-shop, after a year and a half under another manager, the budget was going into a structure that couldn't put it to work. After I took over management, orders tripled.
6. Website after the click
Symptom: clicks are coming in, orders aren't.
Check: run the product detail page your ad links to through PageSpeed Insights. The tool evaluates the page on mobile and desktop and shows both lab and field data. Then go through a purchase as a customer, from the ad to the order confirmation. Compare the price and availability on the site with what the ad shows.
Whether your site complies with Google's policies is covered in the article on what to check on your website. You pay for the clicks even when the purchase only gets stuck in the cart.
Checklist: what you check yourself and what an audit covers
You can find the symptom for all six areas in the interface yourself. An audit connects the areas across different reports and adds the business side: your margin and your e-shop's targets.
At an outdoor gear e-shop, the campaign structure didn't match the product range and the feed lacked the attributes people search by. So the problem sat in two areas at once. After the fix, growth exceeded 30% at the same PNO.
What an audit adds to your own check in the interface:
| Area | What the audit also covers | Area on the audit page |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Tracking | conversion tag firing on the confirmation page, product IDs in cart data matching Merchant Center | Tracking |
| 2. Market and season | Auction insights: performance against other advertisers | Market and season |
| 3. Feed and Merchant Center | feed attributes against how people search and against the campaign structure | Product feed |
| 4. Targets and bidding | target against margin | Your business, Account and campaigns |
| 5. Structure and search terms | whether the structure can put the budget to work, brand searches separated | Account and campaigns |
| 6. Website after the click | price against sellers with the same GTIN on the Prices tab in Merchant Center | Website after the click |
The PPC audit page describes the six audit areas. The audit costs from $400 one-time, and the price depends on the size of the account and the scope of work. If you're considering a free audit, read about the difference between a free and a paid audit.
Summary
- For tracking, compare the number of conversions in the account with orders in your admin, and keep only the purchase as Primary.
- Put a performance drop next to the same period last year. Only touch the campaigns when seasonality doesn't explain the drop.
- Look for products missing from Shopping and Performance Max in Merchant Center, in the Status column and on the Needs attention tab.
- Read Limited by budget and lost impressions together with your target ROAS, which you derive from your margin.
- Where the money goes shows up in the Search terms report, with brand searches set aside. What happens after the click you'll find out by going through a purchase yourself.
- The line for your own check runs between the symptom and the context. Google's interface is enough for the symptom. The context of margin, auction, competitor prices and cart data only comes with an audit.
The interface shows the six areas in different places, but they affect your orders together.
