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There's a hidden setting when configuring geo on campaigns. By default it's set to "People -interested- in your target location" . You need to change it to "Pe

by cj 4y ago

There's a hidden setting when configuring geo on campaigns. By default it's set to "People -interested- in your target location" . You need to change it to "People who are -in- your target location". This setting is hidden under a toggle, so it's very easy to miss. Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of garbage clicks if you overlook that setting. This is just one of many dark patterns which makes Google Ads effective only for people willing to spend the time tuning and tweaking every single setting. A big part of the problem is Google themselves - they say always use "broad" keyword matches (and of course it's the default). Broad matches are really not good for most campaigns unless you have an extremely large budget, yet if you read their documentation they heavily encourage it. While we're at it... 1) Never enable the "auto apply recommendations" setting. If you do, it gives Google free reign to modify your campaigns (this has always resulted in worse performance and more spend in my experience) 2) Never listen to a google ads rep if they call. Once you're spending enough, they'll call you every week trying to convince you to change various settings. 95% of the time their advice is just plain bad. The quality of the advice does increase once you're spending enough and get assigned more senior reps. But even the senior reps are there to get you to spend more money, their job is not to make your campaigns more effective, "ad specialists" are simply sales people in disguise.

justinbaker84 4y ago
These are excellent tips. I have been managing Google Ads full time for about 12 years and I run a small agency. I can confirm he is right about all of this. The challenging thing about this advice is that for most people it feels unnatural to do the opposite of what Google recommends. Usually people need to get ripped off a few times before they accept that fact that Google is no longer a good actor.
- propogandist 4y ago
  Google's reps routinely "take care" of big agency staff and show them a good time while feeding them the same "spend optimization" suggestions. The agency staff can then claim the campaigns were optimized based on Google's suggestions, which is the perfect smokescreen. Most big brands that outsource media buying don't have SMEs to audit the media buying they've outsourced, so the result is Google makes a ton of money via their preferred middleman, advertising agencies.
  - justinbaker84 4y ago
    You are absolutely right. I worked at a big agency where I managed a team that ran the search ads for a fortune 500 tech company. That was usually how it worked. I tried to communicate up the chain that the dinners and outings on Google's dime are a clear conflict of interest, but nobody wanted to hear it. By far the most dissapointing thing was that the client often just wanted to go with Google's recomendations or they had even worse ideas. Even when we really tried to look out for the best interests of the client it was like fighting an uphill battle both ways. Another problem is that anything that isn't direct response is hard to measure so it's tough to make a clear and compelling case. Anybody can chalk up any hare brained idea to brand value and it is tough to push back on that when the client doesn't really care.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Like, everyone in the industry shows agency reps a good time. Back a decade ago, FB reps used to get the clients drunk the night before they'd see Google on the principle that they'd remember less. However it's worth pointing out that Google as an org have absolutely hated ad agencies for many years, in fact being nice to the agencies was a strategy used by FB when I was there. I'm not disputing your point about optimisations, but the notion that Google like ad agencies is just ludicrous.
    - bzmrgonz 4y ago
      I think the problem may be in the "performance compensation" built into their "experts" portfolio.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Google wants to make more money - of course they may not be giving you the best advice for your company :-) What I have found works best is to always start playing around with the most restricted type of ads. So restrict by location, test, restrict to the most exact keyword or semi exact (instead of general), do not use common words as much as possible (or quote phrases instead of single words), etc etc.
_HMCB_ 4y ago
Gold advice. Thank you.
viraptor 4y ago
> Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of garbage clicks if you overlook that setting. I really don't get this part. What's Google's interest in pointless clicks? Short term they could get some extra charge for those, but if they don't convert they lose a customer. On the other hand, for quality clicks they could just charge 5x the price and nobody would complain.
- acdha 4y ago
  > Short term they could get some extra charge for those, but if they don't convert they lose a customer. They _might_ lose a customer — I suspect that they've determined that enough people either simply don't review their results closely or increase their spending to make it a net profit for them to do this. That would fit with the general pattern of hubris you see in many of their decisions where they've been coasting on their old reputation for at least a decade and don't seem to be fully aware of just how much loyalty they've sacrificed.
  - galaxyLogic 4y ago
    Plus they are a near monopoly/duopoly. So if the customer spends for wasted clicks they still get some good clicks as well. Google could optimize it for them better but the customer can not really tell if they could get a better result by some other means.
- ttty 4y ago
  Let’s say with your optimised settings your ROI is 20%. With Google settings is 15%. An end user might say 15% is pretty good and don’t touch it. Google just earned 5% by giving you worst ROI. If you start comparing with other ad providers you’l you might notice you’re being screwed. But low spenders rarely do proper checks.
- pentae 4y ago
  Money. Their interest is Money. They need to offload those garbage clicks that nobody wants to buy to customers who aren't experts at ad buying.
- 4y ago
kakoni 4y ago
Wow, thank you for these. And while at it, HN crowd , Any other tips/tricks/settings that would be beneficial for small business owner?
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  After I got burned with Google and Facebook, I had excellent results with Reddit.
  - hashim 4y ago
    You mean advertising on Reddit? What domain are you in?
geomark 4y ago
"Never listen to a google ads rep if they call." Excellent advice. I was helping manage an Adwords campaign for an online shop, only had search ads turned on, was carefully watching and tweaking ads and managed to get a pretty decent CTR which had a big impact on cost per click. I was in a different time zone (15 hours ahead) than the company. I went to bed one night and next morning I checked and found that our CTR had gone through the floor, was way less than 1%. And as a result our cost per click had sky rocketed from 10 to 15 cents to several dollars. Turns out that a Google ads rep had called the office and convinced someone to turn on display ads, which killed our CTR. Our advertising budget was depleted, our Adwords account had received the dreaded low CTR slap which meant it would be very costly/impossible to get CTR back to a reasonable level. We were done with Adwords. Things may have changed since then. It was years ago and I haven't touched Adwords since.
- andyferris 4y ago
  > which meant it would be very costly/impossible to get CTR back to a reasonable level Sorry - is there some kind of hysteresis? You can't revert the setting and get back to exactly where you started?
  - geomark 4y ago
    Once you have thousands of ad impressions with very few clicks, it takes thousands of new impressions at a very high CTR to get your overall account's CTR back to something reasonable. And now that your cost per click has skyrocketed, even if you can get a high CTR for the new impressions your cost has skyrocketed.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      That’s a sampling bias. You are confusing how your metrics are affected by the adverse event with how your metrics are now.
      - geomark 4y ago
mwexler 4y ago
I've seen this little "handy feature" bite every company I've ever consulted or worked with.
ishjoh 4y ago
this would explain why when i was doing an ad spend for my SAAS even though I limited it to the US all the users came from a different country as confirmed by a third party that tracked where users were from. This is brutal

by cj 4y ago

justinbaker84 4y ago

These are excellent tips. I have been managing Google Ads full time for about 12 years and I run a small agency. I can confirm he is right about all of this. The challenging thing about this advice is that for most people it feels unnatural to do the opposite of what Google recommends. Usually people need to get ripped off a few times before they accept that fact that Google is no longer a good actor.

propogandist 4y ago
Google's reps routinely "take care" of big agency staff and show them a good time while feeding them the same "spend optimization" suggestions. The agency staff can then claim the campaigns were optimized based on Google's suggestions, which is the perfect smokescreen. Most big brands that outsource media buying don't have SMEs to audit the media buying they've outsourced, so the result is Google makes a ton of money via their preferred middleman, advertising agencies.
- justinbaker84 4y ago
  You are absolutely right. I worked at a big agency where I managed a team that ran the search ads for a fortune 500 tech company. That was usually how it worked. I tried to communicate up the chain that the dinners and outings on Google's dime are a clear conflict of interest, but nobody wanted to hear it. By far the most dissapointing thing was that the client often just wanted to go with Google's recomendations or they had even worse ideas. Even when we really tried to look out for the best interests of the client it was like fighting an uphill battle both ways. Another problem is that anything that isn't direct response is hard to measure so it's tough to make a clear and compelling case. Anybody can chalk up any hare brained idea to brand value and it is tough to push back on that when the client doesn't really care.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Like, everyone in the industry shows agency reps a good time. Back a decade ago, FB reps used to get the clients drunk the night before they'd see Google on the principle that they'd remember less. However it's worth pointing out that Google as an org have absolutely hated ad agencies for many years, in fact being nice to the agencies was a strategy used by FB when I was there. I'm not disputing your point about optimisations, but the notion that Google like ad agencies is just ludicrous.
  - bzmrgonz 4y ago
    I think the problem may be in the "performance compensation" built into their "experts" portfolio.
Melatonic 4y ago
Google wants to make more money - of course they may not be giving you the best advice for your company :-) What I have found works best is to always start playing around with the most restricted type of ads. So restrict by location, test, restrict to the most exact keyword or semi exact (instead of general), do not use common words as much as possible (or quote phrases instead of single words), etc etc.

_HMCB_ 4y ago

Gold advice. Thank you.

viraptor 4y ago

> Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of garbage clicks if you overlook that setting. I really don't get this part. What's Google's interest in pointless clicks? Short term they could get some extra charge for those, but if they don't convert they lose a customer. On the other hand, for quality clicks they could just charge 5x the price and nobody would complain.

acdha 4y ago
> Short term they could get some extra charge for those, but if they don't convert they lose a customer. They _might_ lose a customer — I suspect that they've determined that enough people either simply don't review their results closely or increase their spending to make it a net profit for them to do this. That would fit with the general pattern of hubris you see in many of their decisions where they've been coasting on their old reputation for at least a decade and don't seem to be fully aware of just how much loyalty they've sacrificed.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Plus they are a near monopoly/duopoly. So if the customer spends for wasted clicks they still get some good clicks as well. Google could optimize it for them better but the customer can not really tell if they could get a better result by some other means.
ttty 4y ago
Let’s say with your optimised settings your ROI is 20%. With Google settings is 15%. An end user might say 15% is pretty good and don’t touch it. Google just earned 5% by giving you worst ROI. If you start comparing with other ad providers you’l you might notice you’re being screwed. But low spenders rarely do proper checks.
pentae 4y ago
Money. Their interest is Money. They need to offload those garbage clicks that nobody wants to buy to customers who aren't experts at ad buying.
4y ago

kakoni 4y ago

Wow, thank you for these. And while at it, HN crowd , Any other tips/tricks/settings that would be beneficial for small business owner?

fxtentacle 4y ago
After I got burned with Google and Facebook, I had excellent results with Reddit.
- hashim 4y ago
  You mean advertising on Reddit? What domain are you in?

geomark 4y ago

"Never listen to a google ads rep if they call." Excellent advice. I was helping manage an Adwords campaign for an online shop, only had search ads turned on, was carefully watching and tweaking ads and managed to get a pretty decent CTR which had a big impact on cost per click. I was in a different time zone (15 hours ahead) than the company. I went to bed one night and next morning I checked and found that our CTR had gone through the floor, was way less than 1%. And as a result our cost per click had sky rocketed from 10 to 15 cents to several dollars. Turns out that a Google ads rep had called the office and convinced someone to turn on display ads, which killed our CTR. Our advertising budget was depleted, our Adwords account had received the dreaded low CTR slap which meant it would be very costly/impossible to get CTR back to a reasonable level. We were done with Adwords. Things may have changed since then. It was years ago and I haven't touched Adwords since.

andyferris 4y ago
> which meant it would be very costly/impossible to get CTR back to a reasonable level Sorry - is there some kind of hysteresis? You can't revert the setting and get back to exactly where you started?
- geomark 4y ago
  Once you have thousands of ad impressions with very few clicks, it takes thousands of new impressions at a very high CTR to get your overall account's CTR back to something reasonable. And now that your cost per click has skyrocketed, even if you can get a high CTR for the new impressions your cost has skyrocketed.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    That’s a sampling bias. You are confusing how your metrics are affected by the adverse event with how your metrics are now.
    - geomark 4y ago

mwexler 4y ago

I've seen this little "handy feature" bite every company I've ever consulted or worked with.

ishjoh 4y ago

this would explain why when i was doing an ad spend for my SAAS even though I limited it to the US all the users came from a different country as confirmed by a third party that tracked where users were from. This is brutal