Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 10 - Troubleshooting

It's one thing to get your Google Ads up and running and another to manage them on a day-to-day basis. What about when shi* starts to hit the fan?

Do you know how to solve your Google Ads mysteries with finesse, like Sherlock Holmes, or are you more like the bumbling, but lovable Inspector Gadget?

Let's go Inside Google Ads to answer your burning questions about troubleshooting.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales, bringing you more than a decade of Google Ads experience. I worked at Google for six years, and now I make a living showing business owners and marketers how to make more money from their marketing.

In each episode, I answer three questions that you've asked me on social media, sharing my best strategies, tips, tactics, and examples so you can make your Google Ads more effective.

And a quick note, before we dive into the first question today, more than 90% of podcasts do not make it to episode 10. The podcaster simply stops posting before then, so I'm really excited, honoured and thrilled to be sharing the 10th episode of Inside Google Ads with you. Thank you for being here. 

And, to celebrate, I changed up the way I'm ending each episode now, based on some feedback I received. So, stay tuned for the first-ever Insider Challenge at the end of the episode. 

Okay, our first question comes from Matinmashayekhe1746, I definitely pronounced that wrong, on YouTube. And this user says, today I got Eligible (Limited) Bid strategy. I don't know why I got this. Can you help me? What is this? How to fix it? 

Absolutely. Google Ads bid strategies can have many different statuses.

Active, which means it's good and working well.

Inactive, which means the campaign is paused or not running for some reason.

Learning, which means you recently made a change to your bid strategy.

Limited, that's what we'll dive into here.

And then Misconfigured, if your conversion actions aren't set up properly or there's some kind of issue using a portfolio bid strategy.

So, if you get Eligible (Limited) Bid strategy, you could be limited by inventory, which means there's just not a lot of search volume. You could be limited by bid limits if you've set a max CPC that's preventing you from showing because it's just too low. You could be budget constrained, that's self-explanatory, and then this issue, limited by bid strategy. 

This can show up if you're not using an automated bid strategy, like Max Conversions, Target CPA, Max Conversion Value, or Target ROAS.

So, if you check the Status column, not the Bid strategy column, but the Status column, you'll see in Google's recommendation what you can do to fix this limited status, and if you don't want to take the recommendation, you don't have to.

Remember, your ads are still eligible to show. They're just being limited in some way by your bid strategy, but maybe that's by design. Maybe it wouldn't be profitable or wouldn't get you the results you're looking for if you were to make those changes.

So, if you have Eligible (Limited) Bid strategy, look at what Google is suggesting. If you want to take the suggestion, do, and if not, no worries, you're still eligible, you're still running ads.

A friendly reminder that you can get the transcript of Inside Google Ads delivered to your inbox each week. Simply go to jyll.ca/InsideGoogleAds. That’s J-Y-L-L dot ca, or follow the link in the episode description to sign up. It's completely free. 

Our next question, oh look at that, comes from the same user on YouTube. I love it when I get great questions like this. So the next question is, I had like 10 clicks and suddenly it dropped to five clicks after an hour. Why?

So first of all, you do not want to measure your Google Ads hourly. I know I've been guilty of this when I first started running Google Ads for my first business. I obsessively hit refresh, trying to see what's going on, but it's not going to be helpful. There's nothing you can do about it on an hourly basis and it's going to drive you crazy.

When you're trying to analyze your Google Ads results, I typically recommend looking at the last 30 days and optimizing based on information from the last 30 days.

The only exception is if you've just launched a campaign, maybe you want to check it daily for the first couple of days, or if there's some kind of big event that really impacts performance, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you're going to be checking things more often.

Otherwise, you definitely are not going to want to be obsessively checking hourly. It's not going to tell you much.

Now, if you're looking at your Google Ads results from the last 30 days or the last week or the last day, and it used to show more clicks, and now it's saying you've got less clicks - for example, when you check yesterday's results, it says you got 10 clicks yesterday, and then in a week you go back and check that same day's results, and it says you only got five clicks - that could be because Google figured out that some of those were invalid clicks.

And so, Google will automatically take those out and make sure you don't get charged for them, or if you are already charged, you'll get refunded for them.

So, that could be what's happening there. But a big takeaway from this question is do not try to monitor your Google Ads hourly. You will drive yourself crazy and there's really just not much utility in doing that.

In this episode, I'm sharing some of my best tips to help you solve your own Google Ads problems. If your account has you stumped, or you still want a second opinion, I'd be happy to audit your Google Ads account for you. You can visit my website, Jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot ca to learn more about my Google Ads account audits, or follow the link in this episode description.

Our final question today, before we get to the first step of our Insider Challenge is actually quite a common one. This comes from West Ben G on TikTok, and they say, I'm getting leads, but Google Ads is not recording my conversions.

So you may recall in episode four we talked about conversion tracking, and there was a question there, where it said, “Google Ads is saying I'm getting conversions, but I'm not actually getting them.”

Now we have the inverse of that. I'm getting leads, but Google Ads is not recording those leads. Why is this happening?

Could be a few reasons. First of all, those leads may not actually be coming from Google Ads. They could be coming through other channels, Google Organic or Google Business Profile, or literally nothing to do with Google.

So first of all, you're going to want to check Google Analytics, if that's the source of truth you're using, to see where those leads are actually coming from.

Now, if Google Analytics says it's coming from Google Ads, but in Google Ads they are not recording, that means you have some kind of issue with your Google Ads conversion tracking setup.

So you're going to want to go to Goals and then Conversions, or if you're still in the old interface, you'll find it under Tools and then Conversions. See if next to your Lead Form Conversion setting it says inactive or if it's red or yellow with an issue.

If you have a red warning, either there or anywhere in Google Ads, that means like, “Issue! Something's not working!” Whereas if you see a yellow warning there, or somewhere else, it's more like a warning that it may be working, it may not be working right now, it may be about the stop working. So, red is really bad, and yellow means you should pay attention to this, but it's not dire.

So, as I said, it's better than the other way around. It's better to actually be getting the leads to your business and Google Ads just isn't tracking it, versus Google Ads saying you're getting leads and you're not actually getting them.

But to problem solve it, Google Analytics will be helpful, and so we'll check the conversion action itself in Google Ads to see what the issue might be.

And now we are kicking off a new ending for the show, the Insider Challenge. This is where I pose a real-life Google Ads challenge for you to solve, and you let me know how you’d solve it.

This is based on a real-life client scenario. Imagine that you're a Google Ads manager and your client calls you frantic on Easter Sunday saying that traffic has plummeted and there haven't been any conversions all day.

Yeah, we've all been there. 

How do you respond to your client? What would you like to check in the account to better understand what's going on?

What two or three things are you going to look at first to understand this traffic drop and conversion drop? 

Now, there's no right or wrong answer here. At the end of next week's episode, I'll share how I would respond and what I would check, but in the meantime, I want to hear from you.

How would you respond to the client? What would you check? Shoot me an email to let me know to thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot ca, or you can send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs.

I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram and links to both of those in the episode description as well.

Now, I record these episodes a few weeks in advance. So in a few weeks, I will start to share your responses to the Insider Challenge. That means even if you're listening to this episode a month from now, a year from now, you can still participate in the Insider Challenge by leaving me a voice message or writing me a note, and you can be featured on an upcoming episode of Inside Google Ads. 

So here's that challenge one more time. 

Inside Google Ads, Episode 10, Insider Challenge 

• How would you respond to a client who is frantic about a Google Ads traffic drop and conversion drop on Easter Sunday?

• What two or three things would you check in the account to see what's going on? 

My response in the next episode, and your responses in future episodes.

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.

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