Updated: 03/30/2026
Google Ads has changed a lot over the past few years.
What worked in 2020–2021 doesn’t always work now, and a lot of the information out there hasn’t kept up. On top of that, Google keeps pushing automation and “simplified” setups that don’t always perform the way they claim.
This guide breaks down the most common issues we see across accounts we manage and audit, not theory, but actual problems we run into regularly.
If your campaigns aren’t performing, it usually comes down to one (or more) of these:
Google pushes broad match heavily now. In theory, it should improve performance using machine learning.
In reality, it often matches to:
Even phrase and exact match aren’t as strict as they used to be because of “close variants.”
Most accounts we manage:
A lot of accounts run:
That’s not enough anymore.
In some cases:
We’ve even had accounts with 25,000+ negatives still pulling irrelevant searches.
A lot of accounts are built with:
Across many accounts:
STAG (Single Theme Ad Groups):
Google promotes:
as “set it and forget it.”
They can:
But…
A lot of accounts:
Search partners can:
Even if you target specific areas:
Default settings include:
Set:
AND:
Google pushes automated bidding:
This is one of the biggest hidden problems.
Google pushes the recommendation score as a way to “optimize” your account, but in reality, it’s not tied to performance.
You can have:
We regularly dismiss a large portion of recommendations, and:
You’ll notice in the image below that once recommendations are dismissed, Google just shifts the percentage to other suggestions instead of reflecting actual performance.
Before dismissing we should see the score increase by +26%
Afterwards though we see the score only increased by +19%
The score is designed to:
Not necessarily improve results.
We’ve even seen recommendations that:
Every account we’ve worked in gets the recommendation to:
Increase budget
Regardless of:
Increasing budget alone does not guarantee better results.
This is one of the most overlooked settings in Google Ads.
Google automatically enables:
Most people don’t even know this is turned on.
If enabled, Google can:
If your ads look off, inconsistent, or not what you wrote, this is usually why.
As shown in the image below:
Across accounts:
This applies to:
If you want full control over your ads:
Google’s automation can be helpful in some cases, but if you care about:
You’ll want to control this yourself.
The change history tab is one of the first places we check when performance drops.
It can quickly show:
There are two common issues we see:
1. No changes being made at all
2. Too many changes happening too quickly
Both can hurt performance.
No changes does not automatically mean something is wrong.
There are plenty of situations where:
In those cases, we may:
without making immediate changes
Optimization isn’t always about constant edits, sometimes it’s about knowing when not to change things.
If performance is:
and there are:
then it’s likely an issue
We also see accounts where:
This creates:
Even when no changes are made:
we’re still reviewing:
Google reps often:
One thing we’ve consistently seen, and something Google doesn’t openly explain, is that support access is not the same across all accounts.
Smaller or standalone accounts often have:
When reaching out to Google support:
But when we use our manager (MCC) account:
As shown in the comparison image, the available support methods can differ significantly depending on the account.
This directly affects:
If you’re stuck with limited access, it can slow down:
Because we manage a large number of accounts:
In some cases, we can:
