I’ve Run Google Ads for Australian Small Businesses for 25 Years. Here’s What the Platforms Won’t Tell You.

This is the second piece in a four-week series on Google Ads and SEO for Australian small businesses. Last week, our team walked through when to start with Google Ads vs SEO. This piece takes on what Google itself has less commercial interest in telling you.

I’ve been running Google Ads for Australian small businesses since it was still called AdWords.

That’s 25 years of watching what changes, what stays the same, and what the platform quietly nudges you toward that isn’t actually in your interest.

Here’s the thing about Google Ads that most SMB owners never quite work out: the platform is genuinely useful, the results are real when you run it properly, and the interface is designed to make you spend more money than you need to. All three things are true at once. And the platform’s own defaults, recommendations, and reporting are optimised for the first thing (Google’s revenue) at least as much as the third (your outcomes).

Let me be direct about what 25 years has taught me.

The interface pushes you toward things that make Google money, not yours

Every Google Ads campaign you set up starts with a series of decisions the platform helps you make. Those helpful suggestions are worth paying attention to, because they lean in a specific direction. And that direction is more spend, not better ROI.

Smart Campaigns is where SMB budgets go to die

When you create a new Google Ads account, the platform pushes hard on “Smart Campaigns.” The pitch: Google’s AI handles the targeting, the bidding, the ad creative – you just add your budget and let it work.

I’ve watched hundreds of Australian SMBs sign up for Smart Campaigns because it’s the path of least resistance. Six months later they’ve spent $6,000, generated a handful of enquiries, and can’t tell you exactly what happened. That’s not a coincidence. Smart Campaigns hide the levers that let you optimise, so you can’t see what’s working and can’t turn off what isn’t.

If you’re new to Google Ads and someone tells you Smart Campaigns is fine to start with, they’re either not managing it themselves, or they’re not measuring what actually happens.

Use Standard Search campaigns from day one. You’ll see what you’re paying for, you’ll be able to change it, and you’ll learn the platform properly. That’s worth more than the “convenience” Smart Campaigns pretends to offer.

Broad match is the default. It’s the wrong setting for almost every SMB.

I wrote about this in our team’s Monday tip yesterday, but it’s worth reinforcing here because it’s the single most expensive mistake I watch SMBs make on Google Ads.

Broad match tells Google to show your ad for anything it thinks might be related to your keyword. For a plumber in Newcastle, that means your ad shows for “plumbing supplies,” “plumbing course,” and “why is my kitchen sink dripping.” None of those searches converts. All of them cost you money.

Phrase match is the safest default for any SMB spending under $2,000 a month. Exact match is where you want your most valuable keywords once you know which ones actually convert.

Google leaves it on broad because broad spends money faster. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.

Performance Max is broad match with the lights turned off

The newer version of the same problem. Performance Max campaigns spread your budget across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and the Google network, with Google’s AI deciding where to spend. In theory, this maximises reach. In practice, it makes it almost impossible to work out which channel actually converted and which ones just spent your budget for you.

I’m not against Performance Max for every business. For ecommerce brands with strong conversion tracking and product feeds, it can work well. For a plumber in Parramatta trying to figure out whether Google Ads is worth it, it’s the wrong tool. You lose the ability to see what’s actually happening in your account, and by the time you notice the budget’s gone, so is your ability to work out why.

If a Google Ads rep tells you Performance Max is right for your business, ask them how many similar Australian SMBs they’ve run it for and what those businesses’ cost per qualified lead was. Watch what happens.

The recommendations tab is not there to help you

Every Google Ads account has a “Recommendations” tab. Google will tell you your “optimisation score” is 78%, and if you’d just accept the recommendations, it’d be 94%. Most of those recommendations are: increase your budget, expand to broad match, enable auto-apply, add Performance Max campaigns.

Read that list again. Every single recommendation is designed to make you spend more money. Some of them are legitimate improvements. Most are not.

Ignore the optimisation score. Focus on the metrics that measure your actual business outcomes.

Which brings me to the second half of what 25 years has taught me.

The metrics that don’t measure what matters

Google Ads is exceptional at showing you numbers. Impressions, clicks, click-through rate, cost per click, quality score, conversion tracking, average position. There’s a metric for everything.

Most of them don’t matter. And the ones that get the most emphasis in the interface are the ones that matter least for SMBs trying to work out whether the money they’re spending is worth it.

Impressions are vanity, not visibility

If your ad appeared 45,000 times last month, that number tells you nothing about your business. It tells you Google was willing to show your ad 45,000 times at the price you were willing to pay. Which, for broad match keywords in low-competition auctions, is basically infinite.

I’ve seen SMBs get excited about impression numbers that mean their ad got shown for irrelevant searches thousands of times. The impressions counted. The customers didn’t.

If someone’s reporting impressions to you as a success metric on your Google Ads campaigns, they don’t know what they’re doing, or they’re hoping you don’t.

Click-through rate is only useful in context

CTR gets waved around a lot in Google Ads reporting. High CTR sounds good. Sometimes it is. Often it just means your ad copy tricked people into clicking on something that wasn’t quite what they were looking for.

The only useful CTR is CTR on searches you actually want to be showing for. If your ad appears for the search “emergency plumber Parramatta” and 8% of people click, that’s a strong signal. If your ad appears for “why is my sink leaking” (through broad match) and 12% click before bouncing off your service page, that’s the platform showing you a nice number that isn’t converting.

CTR is only meaningful when read alongside the search terms report and the conversion data. Alone, it lies.

Conversion tracking is where most SMB campaigns break

Here’s the honest one that most Google Ads content skips over: about 60% of Australian SMB Google Ads accounts I’ve seen in the last five years have conversion tracking configured incorrectly, or not at all.

That means the “conversions” number in the interface (the one people optimise budgets against) is either wrong or missing. Which means every “optimisation” the platform runs is optimising against a broken signal.

If your account is tracking form submissions but not phone calls (and you’re a service business getting most enquiries by phone), you’re optimising against half the picture. If your account is counting page views on your contact page as conversions, you’re optimising against a non-signal. If your account has never had conversion tracking properly implemented, you’re optimising against nothing at all.

The first question I ask when auditing any SMB Google Ads account: “Show me your conversion setup.” The answer is often what tells me why the campaign hasn’t worked for the last three years.

The metric that matters: cost per qualified lead

This is the number 25 years of running Google Ads campaigns has taught me is the only one that means anything for an SMB.

Not cost per click. Not cost per conversion (which measures whatever your tracking is measuring, which might be nothing). Cost per qualified lead – someone who’s a real potential customer for your business, who your team would call back.

For that number to be useful, you need three things: conversion tracking that works, a way to distinguish qualified enquiries from spam or wrong-fit enquiries, and someone actually looking at the data monthly. Most SMB Google Ads accounts have none of those things, which is why most SMB Google Ads accounts can’t tell you whether they’re profitable.

The businesses that succeed on Google Ads don’t obsess over impressions, CTR, or optimisation scores. They know what their cost per qualified lead is, what their close rate on those leads is, and what a customer is worth. That’s the calculation. Everything else is decoration.

Where the platform’s advice is actually right

I want to be fair, because 25 years has also taught me the platform gets some things right. Google Ads works. Well-run campaigns generate real leads for real businesses. Some of the platform’s guidance is genuinely useful.

Location targeting is legitimately valuable. Setting your radius carefully saves budget.

Negative keywords are one of the most powerful tools in the platform, and Google does prompt you to use them.

Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets genuinely improve ad performance, and the interface makes them easy to add.

Ad scheduling based on when your business actually operates is a straightforward win.

The problem isn’t that Google Ads is bad advice from top to bottom. It’s that the loudest recommendations are the ones aligned with Google’s revenue, and the more useful ones are quieter and require you to know what to look for.

What this means for how you should run Google Ads

If you’re an Australian SMB running your own Google Ads, three things to internalise:

The defaults are almost never right for your business. Change them deliberately, not by accepting what the interface suggests.

Ignore the optimisation score. Watch the search terms report and your conversion data. Those two data sources tell you the truth about what’s actually happening.

Cost per qualified lead is the only metric that matters. If you don’t know yours, work backwards from it: fix your conversion tracking, filter your enquiries by quality, calculate the number. Do that monthly. Everything else is context.

If this feels like more than you want to manage yourself, that’s not a personal failing; it’s a signal that professional management pays for itself faster than most SMBs realise, because a well-run account generally spends 30-50% less on the same volume of qualified leads.

The honest summary

Google Ads is a genuinely useful platform for SMBs when it’s run properly. The problem is that “properly” isn’t what the platform’s own guidance points you toward. The defaults, the recommendations, the emphasised metrics – all of it is optimised for Google’s revenue, not yours.

Twenty-five years of watching this pattern has taught me that the SMBs who succeed on Google Ads are the ones who learn to ignore what the platform is pushing them toward, and focus on the small number of things that actually determine whether the campaign is profitable.

None of this is a case against running Google Ads. It’s a case for running it with your eyes open. If you’re paying for the clicks, you may as well know what you’re actually getting.

In three weeks I’m publishing a follow-up making the case for running Google Ads and SEO together, which is where the real leverage sits for most Australian SMBs. The right way to think about Google Ads isn’t in isolation. It’s as one half of a two-channel strategy where each side compensates for the other’s weaknesses.

For now: watch the defaults, ignore the optimisation score, know your cost per qualified lead.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Should I use Smart Campaigns for my small business Google Ads?

For most Australian SMBs, no. Smart Campaigns hide the levers you need to optimise the account, so you can’t see what’s working and can’t turn off what isn’t. Six months into a Smart Campaign, most SMBs can’t tell you exactly what their money bought them. Use Standard Search campaigns from day one. You’ll see what you’re paying for and be able to change it.

2. Why does my Google Ads account have a low optimisation score?

Because you’ve chosen not to accept recommendations that would mostly increase your spending. Optimisation score isn’t a measure of how well your account is performing. It’s a measure of how many of Google’s suggestions you’ve accepted. Most of those suggestions expand your budget, broaden your keyword matching, or hand more control to Google’s automation. Ignoring most of them is often the right call.

3. What Google Ads metrics actually matter for a small business?

Cost per qualified lead is the only metric that means anything at the business-outcome level. To get to it, you need conversion tracking that works (form submissions and phone calls both properly configured), a way to filter qualified enquiries from spam or wrong-fit ones, and monthly review of the data. Everything else (impressions, CTR, optimisation score, average position) is context at best and misleading at worst.

4. Is Performance Max worth running for my small business?

For most SMB service businesses, no. Performance Max hides where your budget is actually being spent, which makes it almost impossible to work out which channels are converting and which are just burning money. For ecommerce brands with strong product feeds and reliable conversion tracking, it can work. For a plumber or a professional services firm trying to work out whether Google Ads is profitable, it’s the wrong tool.