Google Ads

Pop-art rotary phone with glowing neural-network nodes inside its cord and three speech bubbles tagged HighIntent, ConsultationScheduled, and Robocall

Google Ads Made Call Recording Default. AI Decides What Counts as a Lead.

On April 21, 2026, Google Ads turned on call recording by default for most US and Canada accounts and replaced call duration with an AI quality score as the primary signal for AI-qualified call leads. Smart Bidding now optimizes against that score. Healthcare and financial services accounts are excluded by

Pop-art map of the US showing 102 red pins clustered in tiny pockets and thousands of green dots scattered everywhere else, illustrating the 0.7 percent affluent ZIP fallacy

The 102 'Richest' US ZIP Codes Hold Just 0.7% of (K+ Households

The 102 "richest" US ZIP codes by median income contain just 0.7% of all American households earning $150,000 or more, according to a post that ran in r/PPC this week, citing US Census American Community Survey data. The remaining 99.3% of $150K+ households live

Safari 26 Strips GCLID From 20% of Sessions and Google Ads Has No Native Fix

Safari 26's tracking protection strips the GCLID parameter from Google Ads URLs in private browsing, which is roughly 20% of Safari sessions. Without GCLID, Google Ads cannot match the click to the conversion, and Smart Bidding starts misreading Safari traffic as unprofitable. The working fix is renaming GCLID

Google Ads Demand Gen image ads stacked in an 'In Review' tray next to a large stopwatch showing over seven days, illustrating the review queue delay

Google Admitted Demand Gen Image Ads Are Taking Over a Week to Clear Review

Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed on April 24 that "some Demand Gen image ads are taking longer than expected to complete review." Reported delays are running past seven days, against Google's documented one-to-two day standard. Search and Performance Max campaigns are clearing review at normal

A Two-IP Trick Just Rendered Google Ads Exclusion Lists Useless

Faktica Analytics, a Madrid PPC agency, published a proof-of-concept on April 21 showing Google Ads IP exclusion lists can be bypassed by splitting a single click across two IP addresses. A hidden IP harvests the ad URL and the GCLID, then hands both to an already-excluded IP that fires the

Pop art illustration of a Google Ads conversion goals dashboard with primary and secondary toggles, a bidding strategy dial, and an offline upload feedback arrow.

Smart Bidding Is Optimizing for the Wrong Conversions. How to Fix Your Signal.

Smart Bidding learns from whatever you mark as primary. If that list includes raw form fills, PDF downloads, or newsletter signups, the algorithm spends your budget finding more of them instead of buyers. Google's own 2021 benchmark, cited in Optmyzr's value-based bidding guide, clocks a 14%

Pop-art illustration of a Google Ads dashboard with a primary vs secondary conversion toggle and halftone dot pattern showing smart bidding signal optimization

Smart Bidding Is Optimizing for the Wrong Conversions. Here's the Fix.

Smart Bidding learns from whatever you tell it counts. If your primary conversion is a raw form submission, the algorithm will spend your budget finding people who fill out forms, not people who buy. Value-based bidding advertisers see an average 14% lift in conversion value at a similar ROAS once