Real Google Ads Account Teardown — Week of Aug 31

Source: YouTube auto-generated captions, lightly cleaned (repeated caption lines removed, misheard brand names corrected).

0:00 — Quiet spend leaks

This morning, I pulled one live account under management. Last 30 days, it spent $960. 251 of that went to search terms with zero conversions. 104 distinct terms are negative keyword candidates. Average CPA sits at $64. That is the kind of quiet leak that does not show up until you tear the week apart. Compare the week of August 24th to the 30th against the week before it. Spend rose from $210 to $283.

A 35% increase. Conversions dropped from two to one. CPA climbed from $105 to $283. You paid more and bought fewer outcomes. That gap is why the week gets torn down. Break the same week down by campaign. Campaign A burned $207 for zero conversions, while spend rose 42%. Campaign B spent $46 for zero conversions with spend up 27%. Campaign C spent $17. Delivered the only conversion and cut spend 34%. Budget drifted hard toward the losers. A

1:11 — Four step teardown

teardown is not a dashboard glance. You read pacing first, so you know whether the account was even supposed to spend like that. Then you find what moved, explain why it moved, and name a fix you can ship the same day. Skip the order and you optimize noise. Follow it and every number has a clear job in the

1:30 — Step 1 — Read the pacing

write-up. Step one is read the pacing. Open the focus week and the prior week side by side and ask whether daily spend tracked the plan. A 35% spend jump with half the conversions is not a creative problem yet. It is a pacing problem. You need that baseline before you blame a keyword, an asset, or a bid strategy. Pacing tells you if the machine run hot or cold relative to your own baseline.

Without it, a CPA spike looks like a tracking failure when it is really budget concentration inside two campaigns. Buyers who skip pacing chase last click symptoms for an afternoon. Buyers who start here spend the afternoon on the lever that actually moved cost. Step two

2:12 — Step 2 — Find what moved

is find what moved. Sort campaigns by spend change and conversion change, not by campaign name. Here, campaign A and campaign B absorbed most of the extra dollars and returned nothing. Campaign C got cheaper and still produced the only conversion. The movers are the two zero conversion campaigns that took the budget left. Write the movers down as plain facts before you invent a story. $207.46 with zero conversions is the fact set. $17 with one conversion is the contrast line. When you name the movers first, every explanation has to fit the dollars. That discipline is what keeps a teardown honest instead of the

2:55 — Step 3 — Explain why

Step three is explain why. Match the movers to search terms, match types, and bid behavior in the same window. In this account, $251 across the last 30 days sat on terms with zero conversions. 104 of those terms are clean negative candidates. The week's extra spend likely fed that same unmanaged query set. Why matters because the fix changes with the cause. If match types opened junk queries, you negate and tighten. If a bid strategy chased volume after a thin conversion week, you cap or segment. Same CPA chart, different action. An explanation you cannot test in 7 days is only a narrative, so keep it tight to query and bid evidence. Step

3:41 — Step 4 — Name the fix

four is name the fix. Be specific enough that another buyer could execute it without you in the room. For this account, the fix is add the 104 negative keyword candidates, cut or reallocate campaign A and B until queries are clean and protect campaign C efficiency while you rebuild volume on better terms. A named fix has a surface, an owner, and a success check. Negatives go in the shared list, spend pressure comes off A and B, and you recheck wasted search spend and CPA in 7 days.

If wasted query dollars fall and CPA moves back towards $64 or better, the diagnosis held. If not, you reopen the Y step with fresh evidence. This order

4:24 — Why the order matters

matters because each step bounds the next one. Pacing keeps you from treating a planned perch like an accident. Movers keep you from rewriting a campaign that did not change. Why keeps you from pasting a generic negative list on the wrong match type. The fix stays small and testable only when the first three steps run in sequence. Reverse the order and the week still looks bad, but the work turns vague. People jump straight to a fix, add 20 random negatives, and stop.

They never notice campaign C was the only efficient path. Or they rebuild bids before they read that spend was already up 35%. Sequence is how a teardown avoids busy work dressed as optimization. Before you close the sheet, confirm four things in writing. You recorded week over week spend and conversions. You listed the campaigns that actually moved dollars. You tied the move to queries or bids with evidence. You wrote one fix with a 7-day check. That package is a complete teardown. Anything thinner is a screenshot with opinions attached. Recap

5:31 — Recap

the live numbers from this account. 30-day spend was $960. $251 sat on zero conversion terms. 104 terms are negative candidates, and average CPA is $64. The focus week spent $283 for one conversion versus $210 for two the week before. Campaign A and Campaign B took the spend lift at $207 and $46 with zero conversions. Campaign C held the only conversion on $17. The method on the next account stays identical. Read pacing, find what moved, explain why, name the fix. Keep the write-up short enough that a buyer can run the fix before lunch. When you want the full write-up of this teardown and the query lists behind it, the blog is on armiego.com.

Run the same four steps on your own account this week and compare your wasted search spend to the $251 leak we found before you touch bids. Buddy by Arm Ego, a company of It All Started With an Idea.