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Google: Max conversions were dying, changed over to max clicks, have seen nothing for 5 days, what’s up?
Hi all, small business here, our campaigns were running on Max Conversions (bringing in 1-10 conversions per day), to see if we could shake things up a little, we changed the bid strategy to Max Clicks (previously when we’ve done this there is an increase in spend and a huge uptick in clicks/conversions).
This time, the campaigns were put in to learning mode for 5 days by google(!) now they’re out of the learning mode and not bringing in a single conversion for the last 3 days, clicks and spend are about the same as before.
Do I wait it out, or switch back to Max Conversions? If I change back to Max Conversions, will the campaigns be put in to another 5 days of learning by google?!
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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8 Replies
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ummm! this is a drastic change, from let’s say 5 conversions per day to zero for 3 days…this shouldn’t happen if we are receiving genuine clicks, ideally we also need to look at the other matrices, spends ctr, click! what about them, how old is your campaign and then how often are you checking sqr reports if I am correct it’s about a search or shopping campaign
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Maximize clicks set your bids to help get as many clicks as possible within your budget regardless of the results. Clicks don’t mean wanted results. Maximize conversions set bids to help get the most conversions for your campaign, meaning that tries to get you as many relevant results (sales, leads, sign-ups…).
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That’s what split testing is for, don’t change your alpha drastically. You need to take back control of the campaign under manual CPC and bid up the keywords that were driving conversions prior. I would take a 3 and 6 month look at the keyword conversion data. Set bids slightly above last month’s avg cpc’s for these keywords. Once you start getting conversions again and enough to switch back to a TCPA or Max conversions then do it. I would also scan the SQR search query report for anything irrelevant. If you are a home service provider I can likely help you drive more leads as I work with multiple service providers. Anyway, good luck. ?
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If it’s specifically been the last 5 days, I’d take a look at this thread and a few others over the past few days.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/p9zda9/google_ads_ongoing_issue_checkin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/p9zda9/google_ads_ongoing_issue_checkin/)
Basically, Google dropped some sort of ball that murdered impressions, clicks, and all other key metrics. It’s returning to normalish now but a lot of campaigns are experiencing reduced performance after being pushed back into learning phases.
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try switching to target CPA using your average CPA over the past 90 days or so
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Dupe the campaign and let it run again. You can kill it by making a heavy change like that.
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I would second what some others have mentioned;
1. Set up an experiment running (to 1. limit learning phase (will be tricky to avoid unless you want to run Maximize clicks forever) to half your account, 2. start pivoting into what Google would label as best practice) with tCPA/tROAS, giving it some room based on your previous average CPA/ROAS
2. If/when tCPA proves more successful; apply that for all campaigns, if not; adjust targets or test something new (e.g. remove locations, campaigns, audiences, etc.)
3. In the future when you see similar changes – adjust tCPA/tROAS targets to get more volumeGood luck!
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Learning mode is intense, and a little scary at first but really it isn’t a bad thing.
All these bidding strategies use machine learning to decide how to bid. The learning phase is just it figuring out what to do and how to bid. 5 days really isn’t that long and if everything is set up right it should smooth out pretty fast.
With 1-10 conv/day you should be able to work with Target CPA which is a much better strategy in my personal experience. Seems to just work better overall.
Maybe try that? And I think someone else mentioned it, try not to make huge changes all at once. It throws off the algorithm sometimes.
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edit: Also, sometimes there will be a dip. Try to avoid a knee jerk, panic reaction and give it a few days to a week to smooth out when you experience them.
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