A love letter to statistics

Published April 2021. Last updated July 2026.

This is for you if you’re interested in making data-driven decisions about your Google Ads.

Amy Hebdon, founder at Paid Search Magic, wrote a fantastic article she described a love letter disguised as a how-to about PPC data interpretation.

She covers four strategies and frameworks for avoiding mistakes and finding insights in PPC data.

  1. Be a critical thinker & your own biggest skeptic

  2. Know your KPIs & calculations

  3. Uncover spurious relationships

  4. Accept uncertainty

The first point resonated: Be a critical thinker and your own biggest skeptic.

I’m at the point in my career where I think I might actually know what I’m doing. The danger now is becoming overconfident. Critical thinking guards against this.

Amy (and others) suggests developing critical thinking requires asking yourself questions like:

  • What else could have caused the outcome?

  • What other interpretations are possible?

  • Why are those interpretations not valid?

It's a little painful at first. But it's a lot less painful than latching onto the your conclusion and later finding out it was wrong.

The full article is worth a read here

Most Google Ads Problems Aren't Google Ads Problems
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© 2026 Pete Bowen