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2 contributions to PPC Launchpad
Jun 21 •
Issue with Google Ads PMax Campaigns Attracting Bot Traffic and Overspending
Issue with Google Ads PMax Campaigns Attracting Bot Traffic and Overspending I’m currently facing a serious issue with my Performance Max (PMax) feed-only campaigns on Google Ads. Despite working with a highly experienced agency—who has a proven track record of over $100 million in revenue and 5+ ROAS with other clients—our campaigns are suffering from what appears to be bot-dominated traffic. Symptoms: - 99% of clicks appear to be from bots: Unrealistic click behavior with no engagement or conversions. - Extremely low CPCs (e.g., €0.01–€0.03) despite running high-ticket products (luxury segment in Germany). - Unrealistic impression spikes: Massive impression and click surges often occur within the first few hours after midnight. - Budget drain: Campaigns frequently overspend their daily budget limit (DSL) within a very short time, with no meaningful traffic or results to show. Background: - I sell high-ticket products in Germany and rely on shopping ads for qualified traffic. - This issue started after my Google Merchant Center (GMC) account was suspended, due to a false flag claiming there were "no products" on the site. - We contacted Google support, who reviewed the case and confirmed there were no actual violations. Our GMC and products were reinstated. - To be safe, we switched to a new Google Ads account, which initially performed well for about five days. After that, the same pattern re-emerged—huge traffic spikes, bot-like behavior, overspending, and no real conversions. What We’ve Tried: - Switching ad accounts - Working with a top-tier agency - Verifying all merchant/product/account setup issues were resolved - Contacting Google support (no clear answers so far) Request for Help: We’re at a loss here. Even with experienced help, everything seems to be technically correct, yet the campaign performance is entirely unrealistic. It behaves like a bot farm is targeting the feed-based campaigns. Is this related to: - A shadowban or flag on the domain after the temporary GMC suspension? - A structural issue with the PMax campaign or targeting logic? - An underlying security or tracking problem? - A Google-side glitch or system abuse?
0 likes • Jul 6
You can use a tool that automatically identifies and filters out fake clicks from bots and AI agents. Here's the one I'd recommend, Parados, and it was built by a former Google security engineer. I'm happy to make an introduction to the co-founder if you're interested.
Dec '24 •
Lawyer PPC Experience Folks?
Hello All, Do we have anyone here who has experience doing search ads lead gen for US car accidents/injury lawyers? Need a guidance pl.
3 likes • Jan 1
@Nitin Mevada What's your monthly budget? Here's what worked well for the account I was managing (the client was also a personal injury lawyer in FL) after testing a bunch of stuff over several months. 1. Search campaigns only with display and search partner networks excluded. I would not recommend any other campaign types for the law industry unless you are working with a large firm with a mature account and a huge budget 2. Campaigns targeted to specific counties or zip codes depending on the size of the locations served 3. Ad copy specific to the locations using DKI 4. The landing page is going to be critical. It should be simple with one phone number (click to call and tracked) in the upper right hand corner with a simple form (3 fields or less) in the middle of the LP and above the fold on mobile devices 5. We used CallRail to track phone calls and listened to them daily. We also identified the average length of time for quality calls and used that in GAds as the min. duration for calls to be counted as conversions (I would only recommend this route if your conversion volume will not drop below a min. of 30 conv. per month). 6. We monitored search term reports at least once per day and added negatives regularly 7. Example keywords that performed well: 'car accident lawyer palm beach' or 'car accident attorney near me'. After testing all match types, we only used exact match because even with robust negative lists, the other match types led to irrelevant matching 8. Ultimately, we found that a $30k/month budget was required to drive the amount of lead volume needed for the client to meet his goals, but this may be different for your situation based on the client, firm, account, etc.
1 like • Jan 2
@Nitin Mevada Sounds like you're on the right path. To answer your KW question, here's how I would approach it... 1. At the end of the day, the budget amount doesn't really matter as long as it's big enough to accomplish two things...#1 acquire enough lead volume to fill your client's book with clients and #2 acquire enough conversion data to inform smart bidding strategies unless you want to run on manual CPC forever 2. If you have reliable conversion and lead quality data already, I'd run an analysis over the last 12 months at the KW and search term report (with the KW column pulled in) level and identify your top converting terms/keywords. If you don't have 12 months of data available, just use a timeframe that is long enough to give you reliable data (last 90 days, etc.) 3. I'd then pair the findings from the analyses with your own knowledge of the account (you can always get your client's two cents here as well) about which keywords are the core, high intent queries to show up for consistently 4. After #2 and #3, you should have a short list of core keywords. Ultimately, your goal is to use your entire $5k budget on only the top converting KWs to reach a minimum of 15 conversions/month, but 30+ is ideal and more scalable 5. As far as the best bid strategy to start with, I'd normally tell you to try max conversions and give it 7 full days to start working, but the law industry is SO expensive and you have a smaller budget. Here's what I would try...find the average CPCs (last 7 days) for the short list of KWs that you want to test and set the max CPCs 10% higher than the average CPCs to start out. 6. My approach above in #5 is based on my years of experience manually optimizing large Google Ads accounts before smart bidding existed. I'm not saying there is some perfect formula or that these amounts won't need adjusting based on if you're getting any visibility and clicks, but this is how I would start out. Monitor the data and then make 10% incremental boosts to the max CPCs as needed every couple of days.
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@marjorie-vizethann-5139
I run an agency, Alpine Analytix, that helps health and wellness companies grow profitably with Google Ads.
Active 88d ago
Joined Dec 19, 2024
United States
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