This Mistake Could Ruin Your Google Ads — Transcript

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1. 0:00There's a way to turn your local service
2. 0:01ads off right now by accident, and you
3. 0:04do it from inside your Google Business
4. 0:06Profile, not from your ad account. From
5. 0:08the profile. That's new as of this month
6. 0:11for home services and storefront trades
7. 0:13in the United States, and everyone else
8. 0:15is going to get a 14-day warning before
9. 0:17it reaches them. This happened because
10. 0:19Google just rewired which system feeds
11. 0:21which. What this means is that your ads
12. 0:24can't move your organic rankings. They
13. 0:26never could. The connection runs the
14. 0:28other direction. But Google keeps making
15. 0:30this wider. We can go back and watch the
16. 0:33sequence. In 2024, Google merged the
17. 0:35booking systems between the business
18. 0:36profiles and the local service ads. In
19. 0:382025, they moved LSA reviews onto the
20. 0:41business profile itself, and the
21. 0:43separate LSA review link stopped
22. 0:45existing. Now, the ad campaign itself
23. 0:48gets assembled out of the profile.
24. 0:52>> [sighs]
25. 0:52>> Your old LSA dashboard is going away,
26. 0:54and what replaces it is a keywordless
27. 0:57campaign inside Google Ads that pulls
28. 1:00its straight from your business profile.
29. 1:04Free moves, same direction every time.
30. 1:06Something in your business profile
31. 1:08becomes an input to your ads, but
32. 1:10nothing ever travels back the other way.
33. 1:12But that is exactly why editing your
34. 1:15profile can pause your campaigns. If you
35. 1:17change your business name or your
36. 1:18address and Google runs a verification
37. 1:20review, which is very common, the ads
38. 1:23built out of that profile are going to
39. 1:24shut down for 24 to 48 hours while that
40. 1:27clears. So, don't change your address in
41. 1:30the middle of the busy season. Now, look
42. 1:32at how Google says the ads get ranked.
43. 1:34Their documentation describes an auction
44. 1:36based on your bid and how likely your ad
45. 1:39is to produce a lead. And under that,
46. 1:41they list profile quality. Star rating
47. 1:44and review volume, plus how fast you
48. 1:46answer a lead. Those are organic
49. 1:48signals. Reviews are signals that
50. 1:52influence where you're ranked on the map
51. 1:54pack, and Google is using the same
52. 1:55inputs to decide where you sit in the ad
53. 1:57unit. Plus, we know that Google cares a
54. 2:00lot about goal completion, and we have a
55. 2:02lot of evidence that if you stop
56. 2:04answering your phone, your rank position
57. 2:06suffers, your organic rank position.
58. 2:08Google is making it very clear that that
59. 2:10happens for your LSA placement, also.
60. 2:13Your organic work starts feeding your ad
61. 2:16rank, whether you meant it to or not,
62. 2:18but it doesn't run the other way.
63. 2:20There's no ad side signal on that list
64. 2:22that your organic ranking produces. And
65. 2:24Google's own ads documentation has said
66. 2:27for 20 years that money spent on paid
67. 2:30search has no impact on organic ranking,
68. 2:32that there's a wall between the search
69. 2:34side of the business and the advertising
70. 2:36side. If that wall didn't exist, it
71. 2:38would be the most litigated fact in the
72. 2:40company's history. So, the mechanism
73. 2:42probably isn't there, which leaves us a
74. 2:44question worth answering, because I've
75. 2:46heard this from several operators.
76. 2:48People turn on local service ads and
77. 2:50swear their map pack rankings move
78. 2:53within a couple of weeks. Something is
79. 2:55happening to them, and it's largely two
80. 2:57things, and only one of them has
81. 2:59anything to do with ranking. The first
82. 3:00one is simply real estate. LSAs sit
83. 3:03above everything else. Map pack,
84. 3:05organic, and the regular search ads, all
85. 3:07of it is underneath. So, when they get
86. 3:09turned on in your market, the map pack
87. 3:11gets shoved down the page, and on a
88. 3:13phone that can mean two full thumb
89. 3:15scrolls before anyone sees it. Beyond
90. 3:17that, the local service ads has a
91. 3:19click-to-call button that you can hit
92. 3:20straight from the results page, whereas
93. 3:22the organic listings, you have to tap on
94. 3:24the profile first before that call
95. 3:27button appears. So, your ranking didn't
96. 3:29move, you just got buried. So, you open
97. 3:32your business profile insights, you see
98. 3:34your calls drop, and blame your
99. 3:36rankings. The second one has an impact
100. 3:39on ranking, but not a huge one, but it's
101. 3:41the reason this whole thing can feel
102. 3:43true, right? Local service ads produce
103. 3:46jobs. Those jobs give you customers, and
104. 3:49sometimes those customers will leave
105. 3:51reviews on your business profiles since
106. 3:53that's the only place left to leave
107. 3:54them. Reviews are a signal. So, the ad
108. 3:57spend does eventually show up in your
109. 3:59local pack, just not because it was ad
110. 4:01spend. It shows up because you served
111. 4:03more people and you got more reviews.
112. 4:06Hopefully, you got higher quality
113. 4:08reviews. That also feeds into the AI
114. 4:10systems. Now, we can flip that loop
115. 4:12over, right? If reviews travel from the
116. 4:15ad side back into the organic side, then
117. 4:17anything that poisons your reviews can
118. 4:19poison both systems at once. Google made
119. 4:22this a lot easier to accidentally do to
120. 4:25yourself this year. Incentivized reviews
121. 4:28and gating have been prohibited for a
122. 4:29long time, but what changed is that the
123. 4:32on-premises language got explicit.
124. 4:35Kiosks and shared devices are named in
125. 4:37the policy now. So, are staff review
126. 4:40quotas and asking customers to mention a
127. 4:42specific employee. Google didn't
128. 4:44announce any of this. Practitioners
129. 4:46found it just sitting in the policy
130. 4:47text. And enforcement runs backward. So,
131. 4:50reviews you collected 2 years ago under
132. 4:53rules nobody was enforcing then are now
133. 4:55getting pulled away. Let's think about
134. 4:57the kiosk since this is the most common
135. 4:59one I see. A tablet by the register,
136. 5:01customer taps five stars before they
137. 5:03walk out. Every one of those reviews is
138. 5:05coming up the same IP in the same
139. 5:07building in a burst, often from accounts
140. 5:10with no other review history. That's
141. 5:12about the cleanest pattern you can hand
142. 5:14a spam filter. Google is going to strip
143. 5:16them all away. Sometimes months later,
144. 5:19all at once. And this is the same with
145. 5:21review gating. You text everybody after
146. 5:22the job, you ask how it went, you route
147. 5:24the happy ones to your Google link, and
148. 5:26send the unhappy ones to a private form.
149. 5:29Feels reasonable, but it's a policy
150. 5:31violation. And it is detectable. First,
151. 5:33because your profile ends up with a
152. 5:35rating distribution that doesn't exist.
153. 5:37Real businesses sometimes get one stars.
154. 5:40But even beyond that, Google is now
155. 5:42asking reviewers questions like, "Were
156. 5:44you incentivized to leave this review?"
157. 5:46I wouldn't be surprised if they started
158. 5:48asking questions that help them to
159. 5:49identify businesses that are practicing
160. 5:52review gating. So, here's what this
161. 5:53costs today. A few years ago, a filtered
162. 5:56review might hit your business profile
163. 5:57and your ad would keep its own separate
164. 6:00review set. Now, there's one review set
165. 6:02and the ad is built out of the profile
166. 6:04holding it. That means when Google pulls
167. 6:06those reviews, your star rating drops on
168. 6:09the profile and on the ad at the same
169. 6:12instant. That results in your cost per
170. 6:14lead climbing because you're bidding
171. 6:16against competitors who look better than
172. 6:17you on that very important metric. So,
173. 6:20you paid for the kiosk, you paid for the
174. 6:22software that runs it, and now you're
175. 6:24paying for ads that rank worse because
176. 6:27of them. So, the practical version is
177. 6:29short and it's the opposite of what a
178. 6:31lot of coverage is implying. Stop
179. 6:33watching your ads for signs of organic
180. 6:35movement. There aren't going to be any,
181. 6:38but watch your review pipeline because
182. 6:39that's the one asset every one of these
183. 6:42systems is reading off of and it's one
184. 6:44that you really can break in a way
185. 6:47that's going to cost you. Now, if you're
186. 6:48doing the math right now on how many of
187. 6:50your reviews came off a kiosk or gated
188. 6:52text, I made a video about this. It's
189. 6:54called Google is deleting your reviews
190. 6:56and it walks through how to tell which
191. 6:58ones are at risk and what happens to
192. 7:00your profile after a purge. It's on the
193. 7:02screen now.