How Google Ads steals from you

The survival of some companies and online stores depends on their visibility on the web. With Google’s algorithms constantly changing, it’s becoming very difficult to appear through natural referencing, so the use of paid keyword campaigns becomes an attractive alternative. We’ve tested them and the results are not at all what you’d read in articles […]

We’ve tested them and the results are not at all what you’d read in articles on the subject, Google Ads awaits you with traps designed to make you spend, not sell. Their AI isn’t so much used to help you sell as to maximize their own profits.

This article is intended for all small business owners who run their own campaigns or use a small agency. Larger companies have their own agency of professionals who normally know all about these pitfalls.

Following our test, I’ll describe the pitfalls we’ve experienced, and in the next section I’ll describe the solutions we’ve tested that work.

Campaign objectives

It’s important to know at the outset that in a campaign you can try to maximize impressions, clicks or conversions. To simplify understanding, we’re going to compare clicks, but whatever the objective of your campaign, it all comes down to the same thing.

Auction prices can multiply by 300 or more!

At the start of your campaign, you may think that Google has very attractive rates, with prices per click(CPC) such as $0.02, which sounds like a great deal for clicks or impressions. But don’t be fooled: the price per click for the same keyword can rise to $5 or even more in just a few days – that’s more than 300 times the initial price! The price depends on the keyword, its sector and its competitiveness. Of course, the reason given is that the search engine is in a learning phase, getting to know your customers, and not charging you for it.

Getting to know our customers? that would be great if it were true, but you’ll see that it’s often not.

The campaign end date is not very visible

When we create a campaign, we start with the objective, then the choice of target, the geographic zone, the price per day, and we finish by creating an ad and confirming that it will go online. It’s interesting to note that when you create the ad, Google gives you a score, tells you it’s not perfect, so you focus on improving the score, then confirming the campaign launch. All this distracts us from the campaign end date, and if you don’t think about it, you’ll be creating a never-ending campaign.

If you disappear or fall ill, Google will bill you for as long as there is money in your account. It’s important that you set an end date for each of your campaigns.

Google does not respect the daily limit

Google lets you choose a budget per day so that you can estimate the overall cost of the campaign.

For example, if you spend $10 a day on this campaign, you’ll spend around $300 in a month.

However, when we create a new campaign, we test it, compare it with another, sometimes pausing it for a few days to favor another campaign based on the results, the priority of the moment, then reactivating the campaign when it’s relevant. Surprisingly, the daily budget can be as high as $30 per day, 3 times the amount set at launch. Why? This is probably because Google has established a global spend on your part for the campaign, and is making up for the days of downtime when it didn’t earn any money. In short, Google has forecast earnings to the maximum of your campaign’s possibilities and doesn’t want to lose them, so they make up for it by maximizing your spending, i.e. their income.

It’s important to know that you’re not accepting a daily amount, but a global campaign amount.

Keyword suggestions are dangerous

When you choose your keywords, Google recommends many, and in broad queries, you should avoid them above all, because it’s a budget-spending machine. I did the test and Google suggested anything, and the budget was spent without the slightest result.

Google does not remove all excluded keywords

There are some keywords you’d rather exclude if you have a small or medium-sized store, like “free”, because you’ll attract customers who will charge you per click and won’t buy since it’s paid.

As much as the word “free” is relevant in natural search engine optimization (SEO) because it brings people to your site, it’s expensive in paid keyword campaigns, so you should exclude it from searches, unless you’re a big company with the means. I was surprised to see excluded words like “free” reappear in customer searches. Perhaps because it’s part of a broader expression or variant, difficult to say.

In any case, each click is worth something to Google, whereas you’re getting a customer on your site who doesn’t want to pay, but is costing you money.

Google’s broad expression queries are a trap

Of course, Google encourages you to use broad expression queries, telling you that they’ll get to know you better, that their artificial intelligence will be able to identify the needs of customers looking for your products while searching on different words. In fact, it’s sometimes necessary to start campaigns with these broad expressions in order to achieve sufficient volume, otherwise Google will put you on standby, deeming that the search volume is not sufficient.

I’ll give you an example of the broad-phrase keywords I put in my trial with our online training store and the searches performed by customers, so you can judge whether your money was well spent at $5 or more per click.

Wide-expression queries used in the campaign :

Management training
Customer service training
Marketing training
Sales prices
Online courses
Distance learning

Customer searches validated by Google

Let’s talk business
Free at last
Free course
Dep vente
Success manager
Setting prices
Pôle emploi
Mozaik
HEC
MLM
G shape
Google garage
Julien Pelabere
Saad Ben
Scale Me
Ecom
Badr Rez
Instagram
Podia
Fast track
P12
X guard
Bizdev
Brainy up
Chris voss
Academy
Vinted

I have to say I’m still wondering how their AI made those links, the online training store has nothing to do with any of those searches, but in the meantime we pay and Google collects.

Google’s campaign optimization tips

Google evaluates your campaign optimization rate and suggests modifications to gain a few points. The temptation is strong to go from 86% to 100%, for example. Be very careful, and avoid clicking on “accept all”, because the advice, such as adding broad-query keywords, is aimed at increasing their revenues, not yours.

In conclusion

In short, Google’s use of artificial intelligence is more about maximizing their profits than yours, and they’re very, very good at it.

In the next article, we’ll look at how to avoid the pitfalls. You can also ask yourself whether it’s better to do SEO (search engine optimization) or SEA (search engine advertising).

Jean-Pierre Mercier