The checks Lift runs on Google Ads
Lift checks each connected Google Ads account once a day and writes a card for each change worth making. Below are the checks behind the cards on the Lift tab, in the areas the app files them under: what each looks for, its kind of card, and whether Tapper can make the change for you. For Meta Ads and TikTok Ads, see The checks Lift runs on Meta Ads and The checks Lift runs on TikTok Ads, and for how Lift works there, How Lift works on Meta Ads and How Lift works on TikTok Ads.
How it works
- Once a day. Lift starts once Tapper has set your workspace up, then checks each connected account every day, up to yesterday in the account's time zone. The check starts once the day's Google Ads data is in, by 08:00 UTC at the latest.
- The window. Checks that judge spend use the account's Detection window (30 days by default; 7 or 14 if set in Setup > Google Ads), unless their rule names another window. The search term and placement checks look back up to 90 days but count money only inside the Detection window.
- The numbers. Numbers in the tables are the defaults. A card's Evidence gives its rule with the numbers used for your account, and a waste card's How we priced this names its benchmark for what a conversion normally costs.
- One list. The Lift tab lists every card under Keywords and ads first: keywords and search terms, then ads, budgets and bidding, placements, products and conversion tracking, then audiences. The Check filter offers only the checks that have cards, each with its number of cards.
- Checked before they show. Tapper checks each card against the account's own figures first, for example that its money a day is no more than the campaign's average daily spend over the last 7 days, and shows it once it passes.
- Never more spend. No check asks you to spend more in total or to loosen a target.
Kind: a Waste card shows money a day in the ad account's own currency, as Savings, Possible savings or both, never added together. A Recommendation card (chip Optimisation, or Over target) shows the spend it affects a day. A Not priced card carries no figure by design. A Waste card worth less than 1 of the ad account's currency a day is not shown.
Keywords and search terms
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keywords not paying their way | Keywords that spent three times what a conversion normally costs without converting, or pay three times that per conversion. The top 30% of keywords by conversions are never flagged. | Waste | Pause keywords |
| Add exact-match negatives for wasted search terms | Searches that spent three times what a conversion normally costs without converting, not covered by a keyword or negative. | Waste | Add negative keywords |
| Add phrase-match negatives for wasted patterns | A one-to-three-word pattern that keeps turning up in searches that buy nothing. A card of single words only reads For review, not priced. | Waste | Add phrase negatives |
| Good keywords worth an exact match | A loosely matched keyword converting at or better than its campaign's target, with no exact-match twin in that campaign. | Recommendation | None |
| Keywords Google scores low | Keywords with a Quality Score at or under the bar the card shows. | Recommendation | None |
| Quality score falling on high volume keywords | Keywords in the account's top tenth by impressions whose Quality Score fell 2 points or more against their own score 7 to 14 days earlier. | Recommendation | None |
Ads
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| An ad losing its ad group's test | An ad doing clearly worse than the best ad in its ad group (95% confidence or better). Each ad needs 1,000 impressions and 15 days of delivery in the last 30 by default (Ad testing in Setup). | Waste | Pause ad |
| Ads Google rates weak | A live ad Google rates Poor or Average. If nearly all its headlines are pinned, the card says to unpin all but the brand headline. | Recommendation | None |
| Ads with empty headline slots | A live search ad with fewer than the 15 headlines or 4 descriptions Google allows. | Recommendation | None |
| Assets Google rates low | A headline, description or image Google has rated Low for more than 30 days in a running ad, or a running ad where Google has all but stopped serving at least half its headlines. | Recommendation | None |
| App ads with empty creative slots | An App ad with fewer headlines or descriptions than Google asks for. | Recommendation | None |
Extensions and creative
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| Missing sitelinks and callouts | A campaign missing extras Google can show with the ad, such as sitelinks, callouts, snippets or images. | Recommendation | None |
| Asset groups under Google's minimum | A Performance Max asset group with fewer headlines, descriptions, images or logos than Google's minimum. Feed-only asset groups are left out. | Recommendation | None |
| Asset groups with text Google barely serves | A Performance Max asset group where at least half the headlines or descriptions each got under 5% of the average impressions in 30 days. | Recommendation | None |
Budgets and bidding
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spending with no conversions | A campaign set up to get conversions that got none in the window after spending three times what a conversion normally costs, or your Zero-conversion spend threshold if you set one. | Waste | Reduce budget to {money}/day, Pause campaign |
| Far more spend than the conversions are worth | A campaign with one to four conversions in the window that spent far more than they are worth. | Waste | Reduce budget to {money}/day, Pause campaign |
| Cost per conversion over target | A campaign paying three times its target CPA or more, over at least five conversions. | Recommendation, Over target | Tighten target CPA to {money}, Reduce budget to {money}/day, Pause campaign |
| Return on ad spend under target | A campaign getting a third of its target ROAS or less, over at least five conversions. | Recommendation, Over target | Raise target ROAS to {n}, Reduce budget to {money}/day, Pause campaign |
| Monthly budget off track | The account is on course to end the month more than 15% over or under the Monthly budget you set in Setup. | Recommendation | None; Adjust monthly budget opens the setting |
| Too few conversions for smart bidding to learn | Campaigns bidding for conversions with fewer than 30 each in 30 days, listed on one card per account. | Recommendation | None |
| New customers cost more than the report shows | Winning a new customer getting more expensive than the headline cost per conversion suggests, on purchase campaigns. | Recommendation | None |
| Budget to move between similar campaigns, total unchanged | A Search or Shopping campaign losing at least 20% of its impressions to budget over 14 days while costing at least 30% less per conversion than a similar one, or returning at least 30% more. The move is at most 20% of either budget. | Recommendation | None |
Placements and channels
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sites and apps not worth paying for | Sites, apps or YouTube channels that spent three times what a conversion normally costs without converting, or pay three times that per conversion. | Waste | Exclude placements |
| A Demand Gen channel not paying its way | A Demand Gen campaign spending at waste level on Discover, Gmail or YouTube. The card says where to switch the channel off. | Waste | None |
| A Performance Max network not paying its way | A network in a Performance Max campaign that spends without converting, judged against your Performance Max campaigns only, or pays three times or more what the campaign pays per conversion, not counting its Shopping ads where Google reports them apart. Performance Max has no switch per network. | Recommendation | None |
| Search Partners costing more than Google Search | Google's partner sites costing three times or more per conversion than Google Search, with at least five conversions on each side. | Waste | Turn off Search Partners |
| Display ads running inside a Search campaign | A Search campaign's banner ads that spent three times its Search cost per conversion without converting, or pay three times that per conversion. | Waste | Turn off Display expansion |
Products and feed
These read Google's daily product report for Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. None has a fix button: Tapper never excludes a product. For an online store, the Products tab also groups your products, see The Products tab: your products, grouped.
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| Products spending more than they return | Products that spent past the no-conversion limit without converting, or returned less than the campaign's target. The limit is set from campaigns of the same type, countries and languages. | Waste | None |
| Products served by several campaigns at once | Half or more of the product spend going to products that took cost in more than one Shopping or Performance Max campaign in 30 days. | Recommendation | None |
| Eligible products nobody is shown | Products Google lists as eligible and in stock that were not shown once in 30 days: at least 50 of them, and at least a quarter of all eligible products. | Not priced | None |
| Problems in the product feed | A problem on at least 5% of a feed of 50 or more products, such as a promotion or a date used as the product type, or titles under 30 or over 150 characters. | Not priced | None |
Conversion tracking
None of these has a fix button: which conversion actions count, and what they send, is your change in Google Ads.
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google and your Adjust count installs differently | Google's install count and your Adjust's differing by more than a quarter over 30 days, on a campaign matched to your connected Adjust app. | Not priced | None |
| Purchases that may be counted twice | Two purchase actions that look like they count the same orders, or Google counting over 1.3 times your connected store's orders (or GA4's count where no store is connected). While it is open, the campaign's other money cards are Possible savings. | Recommendation | None |
| Conversion values that cannot be right | An action's value per conversion jumping to 20 times its normal level on a day it is worth more than the account spent, or a cart, checkout or payment step worth more than a purchase. | Recommendation | None |
| Google's conversion count drifting from yours | Google's purchase count, against your connected store's orders from Google clicks, moving 40% or more from its usual level 3 days running, with 30 or more orders in 7 days. | Recommendation | None |
| Google's return against your store's | A campaign bidding to a target return where Google's return is at least 1.5 times your store's own, on 30 or more store orders. The card says what the target means on your store's numbers. | Recommendation | None |
Audiences
| Check | What it looks for | Kind | Fix button |
|---|---|---|---|
| No audience attached to a spending campaign | A spending campaign with no list of past visitors or customers, and no in-market or custom segment. | Recommendation | None |
| No customer list uploaded | An account that has never uploaded a customer list. | Recommendation | None |
| Campaigns whose audiences are narrow or reach too little | A spending Search campaign whose audiences are all of one kind, or reach too little of what it serves. The card names your own visitor and customer lists it does not use. | Recommendation | None |
Settings
The last area, Settings, has its own tab, which reads each Google Ads account's settings rather than its results: see The Settings tab: account settings Lift watches.
Which checks Tapper can fix for you
A button in the last column means Tapper makes that change for you: press it, check what the dialog says will change, and confirm. There is nothing to copy into Google Ads, and Revert this fix on the card undoes it.
- Tighten target CPA to {money} and Raise target ROAS to {n} move the campaign's target 20% tighter, never on a target set by a portfolio strategy.
- Reduce budget to {money}/day works only on a budget the campaign does not share, and cuts at most half in one press.
- Exclude placements excludes the listed placements across the whole account, not only in the campaign the card names. Pause ad pauses every ad the card flags.
- Add phrase negatives blocks every search containing the phrase, listed on the card or not.
- A grayed-out button gives its reason when you hover over it. If it stays gray, contact your Tapper contact.
For every other check, make the change in Google Ads yourself, then press Mark as done. See Fix, mark as done, dismiss and revert and Automatic fixes and the Activity tab.
What decides whether a card shows
Each account's answers in Setup decide which checks apply to it (Lift Setup: business type, emails and Google Ads settings covers every setting).
- Business type (Setup > General). A Leads (forms, calls, sign ups) account, or one with no business type that Lift reads as lead generation, gets no New customers cost more than the report shows card or other check about winning new customers. An App installs and in-app actions account gets none of those either, nor Products spending more than they return or Products served by several campaigns at once.
- What results are judged on. Lift also keeps, for each account, what it judges web results on (Google, your store or GA4) and app results on (Google or Adjust), filled in from what you have connected and confirmed by you, like the business type. When web results are judged on your store, Google's return against your store's compares Google's return with your store's orders.
- Brand terms (Setup > Google Ads). A campaign whose name contains one of your brand terms is judged against your other brand campaigns. Waste on a brand Search campaign is Possible savings, as low conversions there can be brand protection; press Mark as not brand protection on the card if it is not, and its money counts as savings after the next daily check.
- Protected terms (Setup > Google Ads). Lift never proposes a negative keyword or a keyword pause on your core product terms, a list your Tapper contact keeps. On an account that advertises products, it also never proposes a negative on a search naming a brand those products carry.
- Checks you switch off. Dismiss, with a reason on a card, confirmed with Not for this account, stops that check on that ad account; Checks switched off in Setup > Google Ads switches it back on.
- Other rules. A campaign is a competitor campaign when more than half its keyword spend over 30 days is on competitor names your Tapper contact keeps. With no keyword spend, its name decides (competitor, competition, conquest or conquesting). A competitor campaign gets no Quality Score card and is judged only against your other competitor campaigns; with too few of them, its cost per conversion is not judged. In a campaign's last 7 days its cards add "This campaign ends on {date}." and none is Critical; after that they close. With Use ROAS for this account off, the ROAS checks stop. With actions ticked under Conversions counted, the keyword, search term, ad, placement, channel and network checks are held back. After a target change holds target, efficiency and low or zero conversion cards for 21 days by default after a target or bidding strategy change.
The daily data check
Lift judges an account only on a day whose figures are complete. If the day's data for an account is not all in, or Tapper's spend for it over the last 7 days is more than 5% off Google's own account totals, the account gets no new card that day and none of its cards closes. Its open cards leave the list until a later daily check sees complete data, then come back with their first detected date.
A card whose issue the day's check no longer finds moves to Resolved. A card the check could not see that day leaves the list instead, until a later check sees it, and closes if its campaign was removed or spent nothing for 7 days, with none of its money counted as saved. So a card can disappear for a day and come back. If the page stays empty, see No Lift recommendations yet.
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