Recovering Google Ads performance after fixing broken conversion tracking.

I consulted on 2 Google Ads accounts where broken conversion tracking caused a dizzying drop in leads.

In one account the web developers forgot to add the Google tag when upgrading the site. In the other they forgot to add the CallRail conversion tracking code, also during a site upgrade. The result was the same - campaigns that had performed well for ages crashed. Leads were down to almost zero after only a few days.

For context:-

• The bigger account was generating about 2 000 leads a month from 13 separate campaigns. The campaigns used a shared budget and a shared (portfolio) Target CPA bidding strategy. Conversion tracking had been broken for 6 days when I got involved.
• The smaller account was generating about 400 leads a month from one campaign. It used a target CPA bidding strategy. Conversion tracking had been broken for 20 days when I got involved.

Options for fixing campaign performance.

I knew of 4 options to fix this:-

1. Scrap everything and rebuild from scratch.
2. Switch to a click-based bidding strategy like Manual CPC or Maximise clicks.
3. Do nothing and hope that performance picks up on its own.
4. Try and kick-start the Target CPA bidding algorithm.

I rejected the option to rebuild the account because we'd get a few weeks of poor performance while the new campaigns were in the learning phase. It seemed to me that if we had to go through a learning phase we could do that with the existing campaigns.

I also rejected the option to change to a click-based bidding strategy. The theory behind this option is that you start bidding for clicks - either manual CPC or maximise clicks. You hope that some of these clicks will turn into conversions. Once you have enough conversions you switch to a conversion-based bidding strategy.

I rejected this option because we already knew what was driving conversions. We didn't need to discover it, we needed the bidding algorithm to remember it.

This left the options of doing nothing or trying to kick-start the bidding algorithm.

I chose to do nothing with the bigger account. I figured that with 2 000 conversions a month there was plenty of data and expected that it would recover on its own.

For the smaller account I thought that recovery would be faster if I kick-started the bid strategy. I did this by doubling the Target CPA and the daily budget.

Normally I wouldn't double the budget or Target CPA in one go. I'd step it up in increments over a couple of weeks because big changes cause turbulence. But, the campaign was in a mess anyway so I figured we didn't have anything to worry about.

Performance recovers, but not in the way I'd expected.

Performance for both accounts returned to what it was before losing conversion tracking. But, the improvement didn't happen in the way I'd expected.

I thought that the larger account with more data would recover faster but I was wrong:-

• The larger account where we did nothing took 9 days to recover from a 6-day outage.
• The smaller account where we kick-started the bidding strategy took 6 days to recover from a 20-day outage.

I'm not sure if the faster recovery was coincidence or because I increased the budget and Target CPA.

Data exclusions.

I've since learned about data exclusions. They give us another option for dealing with broken conversion tracking.

Data exclusions tell the bidding algorithm to ignore conversion data for some period. That means that the data for that period won't be used to optimise your campaign.

It's useful when:-

• You're missing data like the accounts I've written about.
• You've got bad data. e.g a spam lead attack or over-counting conversions.

Data exclusions don't produce instant results. Google says they're taken into an account within a week and it's likely that performance will be turbulent.

Google also suggest adjusting budget and bid strategies in conjunction with data exclusions as I did on the smaller account.

If I'm faced with poor performance due to conversion tracking problems again I'll probably use a combination of data exclusion and kick-starting the bidding strategy.

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