How to optimize Google Ads performance in 2026

In this article, we will guide you through different aspects of Google Ads and show how to optimize Google Ads performance in 2026.

1. What performance metrics are worth tracking.

2. 10 tips on how to optimize Google Ads campaigns + checklist.

3. Common mistakes in Google Ads and how to avoid them.

4. How to improve CTR, impression share, bidding strategy.

Note: Most of the metrics below are presented in Google Ads' list of metrics.

CTR is the ratio of impressions (views of an ad) to clicks. It is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions.

It is a valuable metric for evaluating the performance of keywords and ads. In your Google Ads account, you can view the CTRs for each of your ads, listings, and keywords separately.

Depending on the position of an ad and its type, a "Google CTR" is the following, according to First Page Sage research:

As for the industry, the benchmark CTR is the following, according to WordStream's research:

CPC shows the cost you pay for each click on an advertisement. It's an essential metric to monitor as it allows you to control expenses and adjust your budget

Cost per click is calculated by dividing the cost of all your clicks by the number of clicks you received.

The benchmark for cost per click depends on the industry and campaign type.

Based on the campaign type, the cost per click may differ, for example, brand clicks are usually cheaper than popular comercial query. The "good" CPC may also differ for search and display ads. So, the benchmark for search ads is $2.69 and $0.63 for display ads.

The cost per acquisition measures the price of each conversion. To calculate this metric, you need to divide the total amount you spent on the ad by the number of conversions generated.

The definition of a good CPA depends on the industry, similar to other metrics above: 

Profit on Ad Spend (POAS) provides a more precise evaluation of advertising campaign performance. Unlike other commonly used metrics, such as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), it calculates the actual profit, excluding additional costs like taxes and shipping.

Here is how you can calculate POAS:

Impression share compares your ad visibility share with other ads (your competitors). It's calculated the following way:

The ad impression share goal differs based on the keywords' competitiveness.

A great Impression Share for low-competition keywords is 90-95%. While for highly competitive keywords, a benchmark of 60% impression share is a reasonable target. And with branded keywords, the ultimate goal is to achieve the highest impressions share.

The basic Google Ads optimization involves refining the search queries your ads are shown for. Implementing effective Google Ads optimizations is crucial to enhance campaign performance and avoid wasting the budget.

Negative keywords are an important part of Google Ads campaign optimization. So, what are they? These are queries that you want to exclude from your campaigns. Excluding these keywords helps refine your ad targeting and ensure your ads don't appear in irrelevant searches.

There are two primary ways to use negative keywords:

1. 1.
   To help funnel traffic into the most appropriate campaigns.
2. 2.
   To exclude irrelevant search terms, which helps protect your brand and maximize ad relevance.

Examples of negative keywords include the following: keywords with the informational intent if you run a commercial campaign, search queries that have terms "free", or "reviews".

Firstly, you need to view all the search terms you get impressions for. To do this, in the Google Ads account → click on the Campaigns icon → Insights and reports → Search terms.

You can select the irrelevant terms by clicking on the check box next to it, and then clicking "Add as negative keyword". You can add the negative keyword to the specific ad group / campaign / whole account.

Long-tail keywords are those that include 3-5 words. They are a good choice if you are looking for a way to optimize Google Ads campaign performance. Long-tail keywords are usually:

• More specific and intent-driven;
• Less competitive as fewer people google them.

Incorporating long-tail keywords can significantly improve the performance of a Google ad campaign by targeting more specific search queries and reducing competition.

The best way to start looking for long-tail keywords is Search terms report in your Google Ads admin. You can also try Google's Keyword Planner, which you can find in the Tools → Planning → Keyword Planner.

Monitoring and analyzing your competitors will help you gain insights into optimizing the ad. To monitor the competitors in Google Ads, you can use a free Google Ads Transparency Center tool.

You can filter the ad by categories, time, countries, platforms, and topics and add specific websites. However, please note that the tool won't provide data on your competitors' performance metrics.

The frequency of Google Ads campaign optimization depends on a few factors, among them:

• Number of competitors. As competition intensifies, advertising strategies for products and services change more frequently.
• Budget. The higher the budget, the more frequently you would need to review and optimize Google Ads campaign performance.
• Historical data. If you have a large sample of historical data, you can optimize the performance more often. As you have past data, you can compare it to the present data and see the consistency.

In general, you can review the performance of Google Ads eCommerce campaigns once per month for key metrics such as CTR, CPC, CPA, and CR. Based on the metrics results, test new approaches to optimize Google Ads. Minor adjustments to campaigns should be performed weekly.

Here, you can find a checklist on how to optimize Google Ads, and below, we describe each point in detail:

STAGs are ad groups consisting of keywords organized around a specific theme. They are more effective than SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups), as the latter are the ones most impacted by Google’s changes to close variants (Google's mechanism, which allows bypassing spelling mistakes). Unlike SKAGs, STAGs focus on themes instead of syntax.

The benefits of implementing STAGs are:

• More effective budget management. Instead of allocating a budget for every search term, you can invest your budget toward areas with the highest profitability.
• Improved quality score. More refined ad groups lead to higher CTRs, improving your Quality Score.
• Easier ad management. Managing hundreds of SKAGs can be overwhelming. Grouping keywords into STAGs makes it easier to add, remove, or modify keywords.

Over the past few years, you may have noticed a trend toward using first-party tracking for ad performance monitoring. Compared to third-party tracking scripts, such ways of ad tracking as server GTM container or Stape Gateway provide:

• More precise data collection which is not affected by ad blockers and browser restrictions.
• Higher control over the data you track, letting you more easily comply with data regulations such as GDPR.
• Faster page load, as all the data is processed on the server instead of the browser.

So, how does it work to give such benefits? Both server GTM container and Stape Gateway capture data from the user's browser and send data to a server. Afterwards, this data is sent to Google Analytics 4 or Google Ads. For a full picture across all channels, use marketing mix modeling to see how each one drives results and plan budgets with more confidence. In this way, your data can be protected from adblockers or browser restrictions.

Although the server GTM container and Stape Gateway provide the same perks and work in a similar way, they have some differences, which we describe below. For more details, check our article on Stape Gateway vs. server GTM.

If you haven't connected Google Ads to Google Analytics 4, you can easily do so in the GA4 admin section → Product links → Google Ads links → Link.

To find insights and track the marketing campaign performance more effectively, you can use the GA4 feature audience builder. With its help, you can segment users in the way you need.

Audience segmentation will be especially helpful in determining at what stage a visitor "dropped" after reaching the landing page from a Google search ad. The segmentation can be various, such as people who clicked on the CTA but didn't make a purchase or people who viewed a demo video and visited the contact page but didn't complete the action.

Also, you can import required GA4 audiences in Google Ads and use them for remarketing campaigns.

You can start segmenting visitors by navigating to Admin → Data display → Audience.

RLSAs are Google's features that will help you customize your ad campaigns for people who have previously visited and interacted with the website. It analyzes the visitor's behavior and targets specific audiences based on their past behavior.

Although RLSAs are primarily used to optimize display ad campaigns, they can also be helpful for search campaigns.

RLSAs offer more flexibility in targeting broad-match keywords. When combined with a retargeting list, your ads are shown only to users actively searching for the keyword and have previously visited your site, increasing the chances of reaching a relevant audience.

In addition, you can combine RLSAs with demographic data, which can be found in your Google Ads admin.

You can increase the number of conversions by combining the data on audience, keyword targeting, and RLSAs (by using display/social ads to target previous visitors).

WordStream's research shows that using RLSAs to target the audience can significantly increase the conversion rate:

Display ads are one of the ad formats that include visuals (photos, videos, gifs). Although they tend to have lower CTR and CR, they can be used in the long run to increase brand awareness.

You can test targeting not only people who previously visited your website (with the help of RLSAs) but also use other strategies, like:

• In-market list targeting - find users searching and considering buying products or services like yours.
• Affinity targeting - let Google's algorithms select the audience that may be interested in your products or services, even if visitors have not interacted with similar products.

By testing such an approach, you can target an audience close to making a purchase.

The landing page is part of the marketing funnel, and its design also impacts the number of conversions you get. Besides obvious such as making sure your landing page fits the search intent, you should also consider other optimization tips:

1. 1.
   Test the page load speed and try to make it load faster.
2. 2.
   Check the mobile version of a landing page, as the number of mobile visits increases yearly for most industries.
3. 3.
   Make sure your offer is well-communicated to the visitors and is displayed above the fold.
4. 4.
   Use both headline and subheader. The subheader should serve as a transition from ad content to CTA language.
5. 5.
   Ensure the main CTA is also shown above the fold.

Understanding your audience better will help tailor PPC campaigns to target the user segments that convert the best. The audience can be segmented by such parameters as age, gender, and household income.

With a deep understanding of your audience, you can test different approaches, such as Remarketing Lists for Search Ads or Display Ads, as we described above.

You can also try automated bid strategies to optimize your Google Ads campaigns. Automated bidding is a Google Ads feature that helps you optimize results based on your goals. It automatically adjusts bid amounts based on your ad's probability of generating a click or conversion.

This Google feature allows avoiding manual bids' updates for keywords or ad groups. The automated bid strategies use historical data from PPC campaigns to predict future bids. They are available for both Search and Display Ads. But keep in mind that this approach won't be able to take into account events such as media mentions of your products/services or flash sales that can impact PPC campaigns.

You can set up automatic bid strategies in your Google Ads account in the "Bid strategies" section.

Monitoring search queries periodically and expanding the list of keywords is a good strategy. It is worth choosing the search report in your Google Ads account among the various tools, such as PPC spy tools.

The search terms report will display the conversion data on the search terms that led to transactions. The report can provide you with ideas on expanding the list of keywords.

Running A/B tests is crucial to optimizing your Google Ads. It's the only way to estimate the effectiveness of each aspect of your PPC campaigns and discover what works best for a specific business.

Data received from statistically significant A/B tests will help properly optimize ad campaigns and develop new strategies to maximize ROI and ROAS.

So, what's worth A/B testing in Google Ads?

• Ad's text. You can try different CTAs, the list of benefits you provide, and the style of the copy.
• Ad's visuals. It depends on the type of Google Ads campaign you run, but it is worth testing different images, videos, and color schemes.
• Landing page. It is also worth trying different approaches on the page you lead users to to increase conversions. This may include testing different headlines and CTAs.
• Audience. You may test the impact of audience layering on campaign performance and how different audience segments interact with the ads. 

Accurate and consistent conversion tracking leads to data-driven decisions. However, in Google Ads, you can face problems setting up conversion tracking; for example, you may use different attribution models or count types.

Also, you may lose some data due to ad blockers and browser restrictions such as ITP.

Besides Google Ads settings such as unified attribution model and count types, you may also try some advanced approaches to conversion tracking, such as server-side and cross-device tracking.

As described in the section above, server-side tracking will help achieve more accurate conversion monitoring. Cross-device tracking can also help improve multi-platform advertising campaigns and ROI.

One of the practical ways to apply server-side tracking in Google Ads is through the Google Ads Offline Conversion tracking tag. It lets you send offline sales data (such as phone or in-store purchases) directly to Google Ads, improving attribution and campaign optimization without the need for manual uploads.

Your competitors can bid on your branded keywords, so they will benefit from your brand awareness in the niche and "steal" some traffic.

If you notice that your competitors use your trademarked keyword in their ad text, you can submit a trademark complaint to Google.

It won't prevent competitors from bidding on your branded keywords, but they will be prohibited from mentioning your brand name in their ad copy.

Ad strength can be found when creating an ad or in the "Ads" section of the Google Ads account next to each ad you create.

Many marketers try to achieve the highest ad score, believing it can increase CR. However, research shows that a higher ad score doesn't significantly affect CR. Ads with a higher score may increase the number of impressions.

To increase the CR, it is better to focus on each step of the marketing funnel and analyze their performance, as the CR may impact other aspects, such as search intent and landing page performance.

To improve your CTR, focus on imagery, strong keywords, compelling CTAs, clean ad placement, negative keywords, and headline testing. These elements directly impact whether users click your ad.

1. 1.
   Take a different approach to choosing target keywords. Marketers usually focus on high-volume keywords, which may have too many competitors. A better option is to target keywords with low-to-medium search volume. 
2. 2.
   Test the ad headline. You can use different keywords and word combinations, or you can add numbers if you have temporary promotions. Research shows that headlines with numbers tend to attract more attention and improve CTR.
3. 3.
   Create a list of negative keywords and update it periodically. It is worth trying to improve CTR if you haven't created a list of negative keywords (those that you wouldn't like to show your ad on). Such a list will be helpful to filter the keywords that don't match the search intent you would like to target.

Impression share is crucial as it provides valuable insights into why a keyword might not perform well. The impression share of your ad can be improved in the following ways:

1. 1.
   Have a look at the quality score. It can be found in your Google Ads account's "Ads" section. Google calculates the quality score, which estimates how relevant the ad is to your target search query.
2. 2.
   Monitor competitors. Poor ad quality may be the cause of low impression share. Monitoring your competitors is a good way to generate new ideas for your ad.
3. 3.
   Review audience targeting. Google Ads offers a wide range of audience filters. After analyzing your data, you may try different approaches. The reason for low impression share may be irrelevant audience targeting.

Google's algorithm considers factors such as quality score, ad relevance, landing page, audience, and competition.

To improve your bidding strategy, you can try automated bidding. As described above, this strategy allows Google's algorithms to adjust bidding according to your goals. However, you still need to do some manual work to ensure everything goes as expected.

Setting up best-performing campaigns is a challenging task; it requires deep analytics of metrics, constant generating of new ideas, and testing them to determine what works best for the specific business or campaign. We hope we made it clearer for you how you can improve campaign performance and that you have found some new ideas worth trying in 2026.