Three PPC Mysteries Solved: When Google Ads Data Tells the Wrong Story

A lead generation client saw their traffic drop 70% while cost-per-click spiked 120%. Their spend plummeted 60%. Yet their search impression share remained unchanged, and auction insights suddenly showed competitors where none had appeared before. The instinct is to panic. But in this episode of The Paid Search Podcast, Chris Schaefer walks through three real coaching cases where the obvious problem wasn't the real problem—and the fixes were counterintuitive.

Case One: Cheap Clicks Were the Problem

The first client's account had been running broad match keywords with a Max Clicks bidding strategy. The combination looked fine on paper: low CPCs, steady traffic. But when Schaefer looked closer, the account was essentially buying irrelevant, cheap clicks at scale—showing up for generic searches where no competitor bothered to bid because the traffic had zero conversion potential.

The fix was counterintuitive. The account switched from broad match to phrase and exact match keywords, and from Max Clicks to Max Conversions. CPCs immediately more than doubled. Traffic volume dropped 70%. But here's what happened next: conversion volume increased 300%, and cost per conversion dropped 92%. The client ended up increasing the budget.