Location Exclusions Impact Search Campaign Performance
All Search campaigns in the account experienced a performance decline, with conversions down between 15% and 57%. While conversions and conversion value dropped sharply, distribution was less affected, with clicks ranging from +8% to -23%. Costs remained relatively stable, with reductions between -3% and -11.5%.
Seven campaigns had their distribution excluded from numerous locations across Asia, Africa, and smaller countries and territories in Europe.
Monitoring the long-term impact of these exclusions, particularly on conversion value, will help determine whether they bring in more qualified leads.
Budget Changes and New Campaigns Fail to Deliver Expected Impact
The campaign Search - AI Coding Tools - US. saw weaker performance during the week of August 25th, 2025, compared to the previous week: clicks fell 23%, conversions dropped 43.5%, and conversion value declined 20%.
Budget adjustments may have contributed to this decline. The daily budget for Search - AI Coding Tools - US. was reduced from $10,000 to $7,000.
A review of negative keywords is recommended to improve efficiency, reduce unnecessary spend, and optimize the new daily budget.
Other notable metrics
The budget reduction and pausing of an ad group in the "Search – Panels & Installations – IDF" campaign appear to have had a positive impact on performance, with conversions increasing to 3 from 1 the previous week.
Additionally, distribution metrics remained stable despite a -20% drop in costs.
What I recommend implementing this week:
New Negative Keywords Identified
I identified 153 negative keywords to be added across 4 campaigns and 11 ad groups, representing $856.66 in spend (or 0.78% of total account spend during the week of September 1st, 2025). Those negative keywords ensure proper semantic segmentation between your campaigns and ad groups.
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New Keyword Expansion
We have identified 23 new high-impact keywords with strong commercial intent. This initiative is projected to generate approximately 120,000 additional impressions, 2,000 clicks, 840 conversions, and $2,643 in revenue per week. These keywords were selected based on the exact semantic scope of your 23 Search campaign ad groups and reflect terms that users actively search for or that your competitors are already targeting.
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Sitelink Optimization
Improving sitelinks is essential for strengthening ad rank and boosting CTR. I have identified 23 sitelink optimization opportunities at the ad group level within the campaign Search – AI Coding Tools – US.
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Ad Copy Enhancement
I recommend several ad text optimizations to better leverage your top-performing keywords, which can help reduce costs while improving ad relevance. These updates are designed to increase Quality Score and strengthen alignment with customer intent. In total, I propose changes to 32 ads.
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Brand Keyword Cost Reduction
We are currently overpaying for brand protection. The CPC for your exact match brand keyword is ~€0.90, which is unnecessarily high for traffic that is already searching specifically for you.
To fix this, I recommend implementing a Single Keyword Campaign (SKC). This involves creating a dedicated campaign for your exact match brand keyword “Cursor AI” with a manual Max CPC bid strategy, giving us direct control to lower costs.
With this setup, we project a two-thirds reduction in CPC, resulting in approximately €500 in weekly savings—while maintaining the same conversion volume.
