Agency insights
Thoughts and lessons on client selection, burnout, pricing, and modernising legacy accounts, from someone who's run a Google Ads for years.
How long does Google Ads take to work?
Published April 2021. Last updated July 2026.
You’ve chosen good keywords, written decent ad copy, set up a landing page that should convert. You’re getting impressions and the CTR looks ok but you’ve still not had any conversions.
You know Google Ads can be a reliable source of new business but it’s been a couple of days (or weeks) and nothing’s happened.
Is this normal or should you worry?
If it’s normal being patient will solve the problem, the leads will arrive in due course. But if there is an underlying problem being patient is the worst thing to do. The campaign won’t get better on it’s own. In fact it’ll get worse, all the while wasting time and money.
Doing Google Ads on your own is hard. It’s even harder when it’s your first campaign and you don't know what to expect.
This should help give you a feel for how long a Google Ads campaign should take to work.
The table below shows the age of the campaign at first conversion. In these campaigns the conversion is someone filling in the contact form - a sales enquiry. Where the age is 1 day it means that the first sales lead arrived on the same day that the adverts started showing.
I’ve included the number of impressions, clicks and conversions over the first 30 days to give you a feel for the size of the campaign so you can see how it compares with yours.
Edit: I’ve had questions about the click through rate (CTR) and conversion rates for these campaigns. Please ignore them. The stats in the table above are for the first month. At that stage we'd not yet made any attempt at optimising the campaign.
| First month performance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Age at first lead (days) | Impressions | Clicks | Conversions (leads) |
| Aluminium doors and windows. B2C. | 1 | 12733 | 589 | 42 |
| Automatic door repair. Mostly B2B. | 3 | 860 | 56 | 7 |
| Breathalysers. Mostly B2B. | 1 | 5886 | 356 | 37 |
| Wholesale linen. B2B. | 1 | 2003 | 286 | 45 |
| Cambelt repairs. B2C. | 4 | 3512 | 164 | 18 |
| Replacement laptop batteries B2C. | 1 | 16664 | 1090 | 169 |
| Motorycycle hire. B2C. | 1 | 4380 | 946 | 99 |
| Software training. Mostly B2B. | 2 | 1621 | 158 | 29 |
| Reconditioned engines. B2C. | 1 | 1985 | 231 | 27 |
| Property management software. B2B. | 5 | 379 | 21 | 1 |
| Car services. B2C. | 1 | 4402 | 235 | 36 |
| Turbocharger repairs. B2C. | 6 | 3017 | 121 | 11 |
| Valves. B2B. | 2 | 7557 | 468 | 27 |
| Reconditioned engines. B2C. | 3 | 8807 | 912 | 110 |
| Cable marking equipment. B2B. | 10 | 823 | 91 | 2 |
| Workshop management software. B2B. | 28 | 268 | 21 | 1 |
| Conservatories. Mostly B2C. | 6 | 368 | 67 | 6 |
| Noise monitoring equipment. B2B. | 6 | 1778 | 140 | 11 |
| Computer repair. Mostly B2C. | 1 | 9683 | 723 | 134 |
| Mobile phone contracts. B2C. | 1 | 7088 | 726 | 40 |
| Motorcycle tours. B2C. | 31 | 181 | 30 | 0 |
| Data logging equipment. B2B. | 1 | 14331 | 553 | 30 |
| Specialist lighting. B2B. | 2 | 771 | 65 | 9 |
| Large LED screens. B2B. | 2 | 3581 | 281 | 54 |
| Hot air ballloon tours. B2C. | 5 | 8416 | 521 | 43 |
About these campaigns.
These campaigns ran on the search network only. The bidding strategy was maximise clicks during the period under consideration. (More info on the launch strategy here.)
None of these campaigns was optimised to produce the first lead as soon as possible, so in some cases we did things like launch a B2B campaign on a Friday when it was ready, rather than wait to Monday morning when it was more likely that it would produce a lead right away.
Most Google Ads Problems Aren't Google Ads Problems
If my writing resonates with you, I'd like to give you a copy of my book, Profitable Google Ads. The book was written for business owners, but many PPC professionals have found it valuable too.
Before you download it, what describes you best?
Related articles
Every Google Ads lead leaves a trail of evidence
Why a Google Ads account audit isn't enough
Why I'm rethinking how I audit Google Ads accounts
Testing Google Ads for an RV Campground
Mining the search terms report for negative keywords is a waste of time
What’s the right bidding strategy for a brand new Google Ads account?
Topics you'll find on this site
Conversion tracking
Understand what happens after someone clicks your advert. Subjects include offline conversions, CRM integration, attribution, auditability and marketing instrumentation.
Essays and thinking
Articles about marketing, engineering, AI and problem solving that don't fit neatly into the other topics. These are some of the ideas and experiences that have shaped how I think.
Google Ads for lead generation
Learn how to use Google Ads to generate profitable leads. Subjects include campaign strategy, bidding, targeting, optimisation and the challenges of running lead generation campaigns.
Landing pages
Things I've learned about high-converting landing pages. Subjects include copywriting, page structure, forms, trust, conversion rate optimisation and user experience.
Lead quality
Understand why some leads become customers while others don't. Subjects include diagnosing poor leads, qualification, filtering junk leads and improving the feedback you send to Google Ads.
Sales Process
What happens after a lead has been generated determines if Google Ads is profitable. Subjects include first contact, follow-up, quoting, lead nurturing and turning more enquiries into customers.