A Google search ad is a short text ad shown above or below the unpaid results when someone types a query into Google. You choose the searches it can appear for, write what it says and pay only when someone clicks. Because the searcher has already said what they want, search is the part of Google Ads where intent is clearest and spend is easiest to trace to a real enquiry. I plan, build and run search campaigns for small and medium businesses in London and across the UK.
What a well-built search campaign changes
A search campaign that disappoints is rarely short of clicks. More often it pays for searches that were never going to become customers, sends everyone to the home page and reports conversions nobody has tested.
- You see which searches bring work. The phrases people actually typed are reviewed on a fixed cycle, and money moves towards the ones that produce enquiries.
- Each ad answers its search. Someone looking for an emergency electrician in Lewisham sees an ad about emergency call-outs in south-east London and lands on a page about exactly that.
- You know what an enquiry costs. With calls and forms counted properly, you can weigh the cost of a lead against what a customer is worth and set spend from evidence.
Who search ads suit, and who they do not
Search works when customers already type their need into Google: a heating engineer, a private clinic, a family law solicitor, a commercial cleaning firm, a training provider. The more specific and urgent the search, the better it tends to perform, because the person is close to choosing someone.
It suits you less if few people search for what you sell yet, since there is no demand to catch, or if the budget buys only a handful of clicks a day in a competitive London market, which is too little data to learn from. Before committing, compare typical costs in your sector with my UK cost-per-click and cost-per-lead benchmarks.
The parts of a search campaign I handle
Choosing keywords and how tightly they match
Keywords tell Google which searches the campaign may enter, and the match type sets how loosely Google reads each one. Exact match stays close to the keyword’s meaning, phrase match allows other words around that meaning, and broad match lets Google show the ad for anything it considers related. I start new campaigns on exact and phrase match for your most profitable services, and add broad match only once conversion tracking is reliable enough for Google’s bidding to learn from. If you are drafting a list yourself, the keyword match type tool formats it and starts a negative list.
Negative keywords and the search terms report
The search terms report lists what people typed before they clicked, and reading it regularly saves more money than any other habit in a search account. For a UK service business the waste falls into familiar groups: job seekers, people wanting to do the job themselves, students, places you do not cover and named competitors. Each pattern becomes a negative keyword so the ad stops appearing for it.
Ad copy and the assets around it
Each ad group carries a responsive search ad: up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and four descriptions of 90 characters, which Google combines for each search. I write headlines that each say something different (the service, the area, a reason to pick you, the next step) and pin a line to a fixed position only where it must always show, such as a required disclaimer. Sitelinks, callouts, a phone number, your address from Google Business Profile and prices then extend the ad and give the searcher more ways in.
Ad text in the UK must also meet the CAP Code, which the Advertising Standards Authority applies to paid search ads as to any other advertising. A line such as ‘London’s best plumber’ needs evidence you could produce if challenged, so I write claims you can stand behind.
Quality Score and landing pages
Quality Score is Google’s 1 to 10 rating of each keyword, based on expected click-through rate, how closely the ad matches the search and how useful the landing page is. It is a diagnostic, not a target. A low score usually points to an ad group covering unrelated services or a page that never mentions what was searched. The page is often the cheapest fix, and where your site cannot do the job I can build a landing page made for the campaign that repeats the ad’s promise and makes calling easy on a phone.
Bid strategy
You can bid manually, setting the most you will pay per click, or use Smart Bidding, where Google sets a bid for each auction to win conversions at a target cost or value. Smart Bidding is only as good as the data it learns from: if your tracking counts visits to the contact page as leads, it will buy more of those visits. I start new campaigns with tight keywords and a simple strategy, and move to a cost-per-acquisition or return-on-ad-spend target once real conversions arrive steadily, set from what the account has achieved rather than from a wish.
AI Max and Dynamic Search Ads
AI Max for Search is a set of optional features inside a search campaign. It lets Google match ads to searches beyond your keyword list, write extra headlines from your site and existing ads, and send each visitor to whichever page it judges most relevant. Google presents it as the successor to Dynamic Search Ads, which built ads from website content in a similar way. It can find good searches you missed and can also spend on pages you never meant to advertise, so I run it as an experiment against the existing campaign, with brand and URL exclusions set, and keep it only if the cost per enquiry holds.
Locations, ad schedule and calls
For a London business, location settings shape the result more than almost anything else. I target the boroughs, postcodes or radius you genuinely serve, reach people located there rather than people merely interested in the area, and exclude places you do not cover. Ads run when someone can respond: if the phone goes to voicemail in the evening, call assets stop at closing time and the ad sends people to a form instead. Calls from an ad can be counted as conversions through Google’s forwarding numbers, so a business that sells by phone still sees which searches made it ring.
The order I build a campaign in
- Agree what counts as a result. Which actions matter (a form, a call above a set length, a booking) and roughly what each is worth to you. I test the tracking with a real enquiry and check it respects cookie consent; my guide to checking your conversion tracking works walks through the same test.
- Research the searches. How your customers describe the job, the wording of past enquiries and any old account’s search terms, checked in Google’s Keyword Planner for UK demand and likely cost.
- Plan the structure. Brand searches, each service and any area you price differently get their own campaign or ad group, each with its own ads and landing page.
- Write the ads and assets, checked against Google’s character limits and the CAP Code.
- Check every setting before launch: networks, locations, language, schedule, budget, conversion goals and auto-applied recommendations, which I turn off so nothing changes without a decision.
- Launch narrow, then widen. In the first weeks I read the search terms often and add negatives quickly. Keywords, match types and bidding open up as the data shows what works.
Problems I find most often in UK search accounts
- Brand and non-brand searches mixed together. Searches for your own name are cheap and convert well, so blending them in hides what new customers really cost.
- One ad group for everything. Dozens of unrelated keywords share one ad and the home page, so the ad seldom matches the search.
- The same keyword in several places. Google picks between duplicates, and the traffic and data split in ways that hide which ad and page are doing the work.
- A target set from hope. A cost-per-acquisition target far below anything the campaign has achieved does not make leads cheaper; Google bids so cautiously that the campaign barely spends.
- Every headline pinned. Pinning one headline to each position leaves Google a single headline combination, which removes the point of a responsive ad.
Running search alongside other Google Ads work
Search catches demand that already exists. For an online shop, Performance Max campaigns also reach people across Shopping, YouTube, Gmail and Display. When a search is identical to a keyword in your search campaign, Google gives the search campaign priority, so running both keeps your most valuable searches under firm control.
If you want several campaign types run month after month with one report across the account, that is ongoing PPC management rather than a search build. Search ads also sit well beside SEO, because the search terms report shows which phrases bring paying customers.
What you receive
- A written campaign plan: keyword groups, negative lists, structure, locations and budget split, with the reasoning.
- Campaigns built in an account your business owns, which I work in through manager access so the history stays with you.
- Conversion tracking tested from enquiry to report, with a note of what is counted.
- Ads and assets for every ad group, and specific recommendations for each landing page.
- A written review after the first weeks: what the search terms showed, what I changed and what comes next.
What it costs and how to start
Ad spend goes straight to Google on your card or invoice. My fee covers the planning, build and running, depends on how many services and locations the campaigns cover and whether tracking or landing pages need work, and is in writing before anything starts.
To find out whether search ads make sense for your business, send me your website and the areas you cover, with access to any account you already run, and I will tell you which searches I would go after first and what they are likely to cost.