Google Ads provides a wealth of statistics. However, the one thing that all the stats don’t offer is the human element of a Google Ads campaign, so don’t always rely on Google Ads stats to make decisions about your campaign. Many other factors contribute to your campaign’s success.

To be fair, there is nothing wrong with the statistics that Google Ads provide. The stats can give you important metrics about how the campaign is performing. Many times, however, it is how we interpret them that leads us into trouble. Fixing your campaign for one metric can lead to others falling off and making the campaign perform worse. I’ll give you some examples of what I am talking about.

Ad Strength

Ad strength is hotly debated among ad strategists. Google says it’s essential to have good or excellent ad strength. However, I have great conversion rates with ads with three or four headlines, with one of the four pinned to the first position. Needless to say, the ad strength was poor. How can that be? The human element.

If you start to fill in a bunch of different headlines because you want to increase your ad strength, stop and think about the headlines you are adding. Google will choose the headlines most relevant to the searcher’s intent. If you aren’t careful with what headlines you add, the ad’s headline may not make sense when your ad does appear. This is an example of how trying to increase one metric, ad strength, could affect another metric, the click-through rate. If the headlines don’t speak to the searcher’s intent, they won’t click on the ad.

When choosing headlines for your ads, read them in various orders and combinations. You can also use the ad preview tool to review the combinations. You don’t want a headline like “Free parking. Call to make an appointment.” appearing when someone searches for your business. (I’ve seen that as a possible combination.) Only use headlines that speak to the potential customer and their intent. You know that better than Google does.

Impressions and Impression Share

Impressions and Impression Share (IS) are stats that can wreak havoc on your campaign. Impressions are the number of times your ad appears in the search results. Impression share is what it sounds like. It’s your share of the total number of impressions available. Trying to get more impressions is fine if you have the clicks to accompany it. If you have a low click-through rate, the percentage of clicks you get based on the number of impressions you get, the ad will likely appear less when someone searches for your business services. You are better off having a higher click-through rate than a higher impression rate. 

Something to keep in mind is that percentages are more important than numbers. For example, would you want to increase the number of clicks or the percentage of conversions you get when someone clicks? The same goes for impressions. Would you want more impressions or a higher percentage of clicks based on the impressions you are getting? If no one clicks, they aren’t visiting your website; if they aren’t, there’s less of an opportunity for conversions. 

Looking at Your Stats Daily

Don’t look at your stats daily. This is a big no-no. The reason this is not something you should do, particularly if you are using Google’s automated bid strategy. You could look at your stats one day and see a click costing an unreasonable amount. Perhaps an entire day’s budget! This happens because Google determines that the click at that price is of value to you. It may not be, but Google will pull back on other days, balancing out the amount Google spends on clicks. What I tell my clients is to monitor weekly and assess monthly.

For example, you could have no conversions for three days and think your campaign isn’t working. Then you have six in one day. It’s not ideal, but if you assess it month over month, you will see how the campaign is working overall, and that dry spell giving you angst and making you think your campaign isn’t working was for nothing. If you want to have some more fun, try this. 

You can select to see results by the last 30 days and last month. Your campaign will have different results depending on where you are in the month. The reason is that other outside factors could affect your results. For example, a holiday weekend or a snowstorm can affect what people are searching for at any given time. As I initially said, a human element goes into campaign results that Google may be unable to predict. I’ll give you another example.

I have a chiropractor client, and February is typically a low month for conversions. However, we had a big snowstorm in the northeast one February. Their campaign skyrocketed. My assessment was a bunch of people threw out their back shoveling. The following February, the stats went back to “normal.”

Knowing Your Audience

When you develop your Google Ads campaign, knowing your audience and the trigger words that will result in clicks and conversions goes much further in getting good results than any of the stats you look at. I only gave you a small sampling. There are so many other stats I may go into later that provide good information; however, in my experience, relying on them doesn’t always result in better outcomes. To simplify, I suggest focusing on your click-through and conversion rates. More than any other factor, those two factors will give you good results with your campaign.