Rick Hecker - Google Ads Optimization & PPC Strategy Blog

Three teal trays hold unequal piles of copper counters above empty calendar squares that end at a dark line.

How to plan the rest of your month's Google Ads budget

Turn money left this month into campaign settings you can explain: worked allocations, mid-month edits, ad schedules, and the controls behind a real ceiling.

A magnifying glass examines a pile of wooden counting blocks beside a smaller orderly row and a blank ledger.

Cascader Answers

What should I check when Google Ads suddenly starts spending twice its daily budget?

Check the charging limits, trace the extra cost to clicks, prices and traffic mix, then judge mature qualified outcomes. Set an affordable intervention even when the cause remains uncertain.

Blue and orange strips of ruled paper stop at different points around a fold, with a small orange fragment on the far side.

Why Google Ads spend and bank charges don't match: a worked reconciliation

Follow $2,400 of ad costs to $1,850 of bank charges, with every credit, carried balance and payment accounted for—then reuse the worksheet.

A dark green sphere sits where green and copper paths diverge. The green path reaches an open doorway; the copper path passes through two separate hoops.

Google Ads

One Google Ads Click, Two URL Journeys

Follow the visitor and the background tracker separately to find a wrong destination, a missing parameter or a broken tracking route.

A paper Tab key leads by a blue thread through three translucent form panels; the middle field has a blue focus outline.

Try your landing-page enquiry without a mouse

Follow one enquiry by keyboard, including the service selector and a deliberate mistake. Leave with a completed journey or a problem your developer can reproduce.

Three overlapping paper frames enclose different groups of blue squares and orange circles scattered across a cream surface.

Auction Insights: four rates, eight searches

Count overlap, position above, top-of-page and absolute top-of-page rates in one eight-search scene.

A small black binder clip strains to hold a vast, curling stack of ruled reporting paper.

Just One More Column

One page. Three metrics. A few perfectly reasonable additions.

Two paper search strips read free cake recipes and gluten free cake delivery; the same word free accompanies a recipe booklet in one and a delivered cake in the other.

A Dictionary of Words That Can Block Your Buyers

Free, jobs, DIY and four other words change meaning inside a complete search. Seven illustrated entries for reviewing an inherited negative keyword list.

Four cloth ribbons connect papers in a terracotta tray to separate blank cards in a teal tray, each connection laid out visibly.

Before you unlink the old agency from Google Ads

Admin access is only the beginning. Trace conversion tracking, billing, audiences, bidding, and outside services before removing the outgoing agency.

An ochre boot and a teal shoe stand on either side of an empty shop plinth. Paper receipts curl from both occupied displays toward the space where a boot has left a dusty outline.

The boot is gone. Its profit is still in your ad report.

Follow a sold-out boot through the baskets behind two still-running ads. Then test how much replacement profit each would need.

A blank price tag hangs over a blue book. Through its partly open cover, the pages become a miniature mountain landscape.

What did the price just rule out?

A bookshop study predicts that favorable price and rating disclosures can reduce purchases. The useful paid-search question is what makes the visit worth taking.

A blue toy car faces a doorway folded into blank paper spanning two desks. A pencil lies on each side of the sheet.

What would you pay me to turn it off?

A dealer offers to pause profitable search ads, with a way back. Rewrite the participation offer as two parties discover what the answer would be worth.