- Compare the account's conversions with your real calls, forms and bookings first.
- Judge cost per lead against what a lead is worth to you, campaign by campaign.
- The search terms report shows whether money is leaking to the wrong searches.
- Impression share lost to budget or to rank shows what is holding a campaign back.
- Check locations and hours against where and when you actually work.
Before you start: pick a fair date range
Look at the last month compared with the month before, and with the same month last year if your business is seasonal. Short ranges bounce around. A week with one big job looks great, and a rainy week looks terrible. A month smooths most of that out.
If you run separate campaigns for different services, look at each campaign rather than only the account total. A total can hide one campaign doing well and another quietly wasting money.
One more thing before you read anything: conversions in Google Ads are credited to the day of the click, and some arrive days later. The most recent few days usually look worse than they will once they fill in, so do not panic about yesterday.
Minute one: what you spent and what you got
Find the Cost and Conversions columns. Cost is what went to Google. Conversions should be the leads you care about: calls, forms and bookings.
Now hold that number up against reality. Pull your call log, your inbox and your booking calendar for the same dates. If Google reports far more conversions than the calls and forms you remember, the tracking is counting something extra, and nothing else in the report can be trusted until that is fixed.
Check which column you are reading, too. Conversions only includes actions set as primary. All conversions also includes actions set as secondary, which are tracked for reference but are not leads. For judging leads, Conversions is usually the one to read, provided the right actions are set as primary. And if you see decimals, that is normal: Google's attribution can split the credit for one conversion across several ads or keywords.
Minute two: what each lead cost
Cost per conversion is cost divided by conversions. Compare it with what you can afford to pay for a lead, which comes from what a customer is worth to you and how many leads it takes to win one. That is the bar the account should be judged against, rather than an industry average or a number someone quoted you.
Look at it per campaign. If your drain cleaning campaign brings leads at a cost that works and your sewer line campaign does not, that is a decision you can act on this week. Look at the trend as well. A steady or falling cost per lead on a stable account is a good sign. A rising one deserves a question.
Minute three: the searches you paid for
Open the search terms report and sort by cost. Read the top of the list. These are the real searches people typed before clicking your ad, and they tell you more about how the account is being run than any summary chart.
You are checking one thing: would you want a call from each of these people? Searches for jobs, DIY fixes, services you do not offer, competitors or towns you do not serve mean money is leaking. If the same bad searches appear month after month, nobody is adding negative keywords.
Google keeps some low-volume searches hidden for privacy, so you will not see every one. The top of the list sorted by cost is where most of the money goes anyway, so that is where to look.
Minute four: whether budget or rank is holding you back
Add the impression share columns if they are not already showing. Search impression share is how often your ads showed out of the times they were eligible to show. Two more columns explain the gap, and they point to very different fixes.
- Search lost impression share due to budget: your ads would have shown, but the money ran out. If that campaign's cost per lead is good, this is a reason to consider more budget. If its search terms are messy, fix those first, because more money in a leaky campaign buys more leaks.
- Search lost impression share due to rank: your ads lost the auction on bid, ad quality or both. Better ads, a better landing page or a higher bid can help, and the first two cost nothing extra per click.
Minute five: where and when the leads came from
Check the location reports to see where the people who clicked and converted actually were. If spend is going to towns you do not serve, the location targeting needs tightening. That often includes the setting that decides whether people who only showed interest in your area can see your ads.
Then look at the day and hour reports against your business hours. If leads come in at hours nobody answers, those leads are probably going to someone else, and you can either cover the phones or trim the schedule. Glance at devices too. If most clicks come from phones, the page your ads point to has to work well on one, with the call button easy to find.
Questions to ask whoever runs your ads
If someone manages your account, the report is the start of a conversation, not the end of one. These questions get to the truth quickly, and a good manager will be glad you asked.
- What exactly counts as a conversion, and how does it compare with the calls and forms we actually got?
- Which negative keywords did you add this month, and why?
- Which campaign has the best and worst cost per lead, and what are you doing about the worst?
- Are any campaigns limited by budget, and are they the ones that perform?
- Can I log in to the account itself, not only see this summary?
Make it a monthly habit
Five minutes once a month, in the same order every time, is enough for an owner to spot most problems early. Keep a short note of what you saw each month, so a slow drift in cost per lead or a sudden spike in wasted searches stands out instead of blending in.
Northward's Google Ads Management is $499 a month, the ad budget goes straight to Google, and ad clients get a weekly report plus a live dashboard of calls, forms and bookings. Whatever report you get, from us or anyone else, these five checks are how to read it.
