What RankGrep Ads looks for

The Findings page lists what RankGrep would change in a Google Ads account, most urgent first. Every rule reads the last 30 complete days of the account, as stored by the nightly import, plus the website's own SEO audit and its Search Console queries. Nothing is read live. Each finding says what it would change, and becomes a proposal you can approve, or one RankGrep applies alone where your Autonomy settings allow; How an Ads change is applied follows one through.

The rules are cautious on purpose. Each needs enough clicks or enough money before it says anything, because a finding that turns out wrong once teaches you to ignore the rest.

Spend that does not convert

Searches that are not customers. A search containing a word people rarely type when hiring a tradesman (jobs, salary, course, diy, how to, yourself and a few more) that cost money with no conversion. Searches are grouped by that word, and the proposal is one phrase negative on it for the campaign, which stops every such search at once. Free and cheap are deliberately not on the list: "free quote" and "cheap plumber" are customers.

Wasted searches. A search with at least 5 clicks, no conversion, and a cost at least as high as what one conversion costs across the account. They are proposed as exact negatives, which stop those searches and nothing else.

Expensive keywords. A keyword with at least 10 clicks, no conversion, and twice the account's cost per conversion spent on it. The proposal is to pause it.

Campaigns that convert nothing. A campaign that spent three times the account's cost per conversion with no conversion at all. The proposal is to pause it, after checking its landing page and its tracking, which the other findings may already explain.

Two safeguards apply to all of these:

• A negative is never proposed if it would also block one of the account's own keywords in that campaign.
• A search already stopped by a negative you added since is treated as history, not as a problem.

Ads

• Refused ads. An ad Google disapproved does not show. If it was the only ad in its group, the finding says the group is dark. The proposal is a compliant rewrite.
• Ad groups with no ad that can show. Every ad in the group is paused, or it has none.
• Weak ads. An ad Google rates poor or average. More distinct headlines lift it.
• Losing ads. With at least 300 impressions each, an ad clicked less than 60% as often as the best ad in its group, which also converts no better, is proposed for pausing. An ad that converts better is never called losing, whatever its click rate.

Landing pages

Each ad's final URL is compared with the last SEO audit of the site. A page that answered an error (400 or above) is a high finding: every click on those ads is paid for and lands on an error, so the proposal is to pause them. A page that redirects is a low finding, with a proposal to point the ads straight at where they end up. This check needs the site to have been audited.

Budget

A campaign that converts well and runs out of budget. Google reports it as budget-constrained, or it lost at least 10% of its eligible impressions for lack of budget; it has at least 3 conversions; and its cost per conversion is no more than 25% above the account's. The proposal raises the daily budget by enough to recover the lost share, by at most 50% in one step, and never above the ceiling on your Autonomy page. If the ceiling is at or below the current budget, nothing is proposed.

The finding shows the most it could add to a month's spend and a rough estimate of extra conversions, assuming the new clicks convert like the old ones. Budget changes always wait for your approval; no setting can change that.

Search Console

• Paying for what already ranks. A search the ads paid for where the site already ranks in the top 3 organically with at least 10 free clicks. This is information, not a proposal: showing in both places often wins more clicks in total, so it is worth a test, not a cut.
• Searches you appear for with no ad. A query with at least 50 impressions in 28 days where the site sits below position 8, which no keyword covers yet, which shares a word with one of your keywords, and which no negative blocks. Up to 8 per ad group are proposed as phrase keywords in the closest ad group.

This check needs Search Console connected for the website.

When conversions are not counted

If the account spent money and recorded no conversion at all, the page shows one warning and holds back every rule that compares spend with conversions. Without conversion tracking those rules would only be guessing.

Keyword-level verdicts are also held back in any campaign where the keywords' conversions add up to less than half of the campaign's. That happens when conversions are credited somewhere the keyword report cannot see, and "this keyword converts nothing" would then be a reporting artefact.

The monthly figure

Could save adds up what the spend-cutting findings are worth a month at the last 30 days' rate. A campaign flagged as converting nothing counts once: the negatives proposed inside it are part of the same spend, so they are not added again.