Is Google doubling up on its mistakes?

My wife and I have six children between us. Four mine, two hers. We often joke about how incompatible my South African parenting is with her British approach.

South Africans know that the right age for a child to get their first axe is when they can pick it up. You can imagine how well that goes down.

We met after the kids were older, so we never had to have the axe talk. I don't think wifey and I would have agreed on axes or how much freedom to give kids, and when they’re ready for it.

Managing Google Ads raises a similar question: how much freedom should I give Google, and when should I give it more?

How much freedom should Google have?

I'm thinking of two kinds of freedom here:

1. The freedom to decide who sees your ads.
2. The freedom to decide what the ads say.

Google already has the first. Even with exact match keywords, negative keywords and tight location targeting, Google pretty much shows your ads to anyone they want.

We still decide the second - what the ads say. But Google is doing their best to change that.

• They nag about ad strength if you pin your headlines or descriptions.
• They bury the automated assets off-button three levels deep.
• They just opted everyone into automated promotions. This setting makes up special offers based on what's on your website.

But, for now, we can still decide exactly what the ads say. And I'm very happy about that. Let me tell you why.

Good ads stop the wrong people clicking

I recently launched a pilot campaign for an auto body shop in Jacksonville, Florida.

• The campaign’s location targeting is set to Jacksonville.
• The landing page confirms that the business is in Jacksonville.
• I used the word Jacksonville and the common shorthand Jax in the ad copy.

But, when I checked the search terms report, I found:

autobody shop tallahassee

Tallahassee is about 165 miles from Jacksonville. Two and a half hours’ drive. How likely is it that this person wanted a body shop in Jacksonville?

Google showed the ad anyway.

Luckily, nobody clicked.

I suspect including the location in the ad helped. It gave the person a chance to see that we weren’t what they wanted before spending my client’s money.

That’s part of an ad’s job.

We tend to think of ads as a way of persuading people to click. But a good ad also stops the wrong people clicking.

“Jacksonville” attracts people looking for a body shop in Jacksonville. It also warns someone looking for Tallahassee that we're not right for them.

Google got the first decision wrong: who to show the ad to. But because I controlled what the ad said, we didn't pay for a rubbish click.

What happens when Google doubles up on its mistakes?

So what happens when Google gets the matching wrong and then writes an ad to fit that mistake?

Imagine if, for that same search, Google magicked up a headline saying “Auto Body Shop Tallahassee”.

The person might have clicked.

• Google gets paid.
• At best, my client gets a useless lead.

This search came on day two of the pilot campaign. We'd only had five leads at this stage.

That's not enough data for me to be comfortable giving Google room to experiment with ad copy. Later, when we've got a solid idea of what brings in good quality leads, I might allow Google a little more freedom.

But for now, I don't want to risk compounding intent-matching mistakes with ad copy mistakes.

If you like the way I think I'd like to give you a copy of my book Profitable Google Ads. You can download it right now at https://pete-bowen.com/book

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