Google’s issued official guidance on something that’s been causing arguments in the PPC world for months now: campaign consolidation. And honestly? It’s about time they clarified where they actually stand on this.
For the past year or so, there’s been this quiet shift happening. Google’s algorithm has been getting better at working with larger, consolidated campaigns rather than the hyper-segmented account structures we’ve all been building for the last decade. But without clear guidance, everyone’s been left guessing whether to stick with what’s always worked or embrace this new approach.
Well, Google’s finally put their cards on the table. Let’s talk about what that means for you and your online store.
Google Says Consolidation Is the Way Forward (But With Caveats)
According to Google’s recent clarification, they’re now officially recommending that advertisers consider consolidating campaigns instead of splitting everything into dozens of tightly themed campaigns.
This is a pretty significant shift from the old-school best practice of “one campaign per product category, tightly themed ad groups, exact match everything.” That approach made perfect sense when Google’s algorithm needed our help to understand what was relevant. But Smart Bidding and machine learning have changed the game entirely.
Here’s what Google’s actually saying: their algorithm now works better when it has more data in one place. Instead of splitting your budget across twenty campaigns with £50 each, you’re often better off with two or three campaigns with proper budgets that give the algorithm room to learn and optimise.
But—and this is important—they’re not saying to just mash everything together without thinking. Google’s clarification includes some sensible guardrails about when consolidation makes sense and when it doesn’t.
What This Actually Means for Your E-commerce Store
If you’re running a Shopify or WooCommerce store with dozens of product categories, you’ve probably got an account structure that mirrors your website navigation. Cameras in one campaign, lenses in another, tripods in a third. All perfectly logical and tidy.
But if each of those campaigns is only getting a handful of conversions per week, Google’s algorithm is basically flying blind. It doesn’t have enough data to properly learn who converts and who doesn’t. You end up with inconsistent performance and campaigns that take forever to stabilise after any change.
Consolidating those into broader campaigns—maybe “Camera Equipment” instead of five separate campaigns—gives the algorithm more conversion data to work with. It can spot patterns faster and optimise more effectively.
The catch? You need to make sure you’re not consolidating things that genuinely need to be separate. If your profit margins are wildly different across product lines, or if you’ve got brand campaigns that need protecting with separate budgets, don’t just throw everything together for the sake of it.
Five Strategies That Actually Move the Needle on Conversions
Speaking of making changes that matter, there’s been some useful research published on PPC strategies that genuinely improve conversion rates rather than just generating more traffic.
This matters because it’s dead easy to increase clicks. Lower your bids, broaden your targeting, watch the traffic roll in. But traffic that doesn’t convert just burns budget.
The research highlights five approaches worth your attention:
1. Call Tracking and Conversion Intelligence
If you’re in a business where phone calls matter—and for higher-value e-commerce that’s often the case—you need to know which campaigns are driving those calls. Not just counting them, but understanding which keywords and ads lead to calls that actually result in sales.
This isn’t revolutionary, but it’s consistently overlooked. You could be pausing keywords that drive your most valuable phone conversions because you’re only measuring online transactions.
2. Audience Layering That Actually Works
Rather than creating separate campaigns for different audiences (which, ironically, goes against the consolidation advice above), the smart move is often to layer audiences onto existing campaigns for observation and bid adjustments.
See which audiences convert better, then adjust bids accordingly. You get the benefit of audience targeting without fragmenting your data across multiple campaigns.
3. Proper Use of Negative Keywords (Still Matters)
Even with all the automation and Smart Bidding, negative keywords remain crucial. Google’s getting better at avoiding irrelevant searches, but they’re not perfect. And every irrelevant click is wasted budget that could have gone to someone actually interested in buying.
This is particularly important for Performance Max campaigns, which spread across multiple channels—your Shopping ads might be performing brilliantly whilst your Search placements are triggering on rubbish queries. You need visibility on where your budget’s actually going.
4. Landing Page Alignment
Sounds obvious, but it’s remarkable how often this gets overlooked. If your ad promises next-day delivery, your landing page needs to shout about next-day delivery. If you’re advertising a specific product, don’t send people to a category page where they have to hunt for it.
Google’s automation can optimise bids all day long, but it can’t fix a disconnect between what you promise in the ad and what people see when they click.
5. Responsive Search Ads with Proper Asset Variety
Google’s been pushing Responsive Search Ads for years now, and they do work—but only if you give them proper variety to work with. Three headlines that all say roughly the same thing don’t give the algorithm anything to test.
You need genuinely different approaches: feature-focused, benefit-focused, price-focused, urgency-focused. Let Google’s system figure out which combinations resonate with different searchers.
When Low Conversion Rates Mean You Need to Fix Something
There’s also been a comprehensive guide published on fixing low conversion rates in Google Ads, with fifteen specific areas to investigate.
Here’s the thing about conversion rates: there’s no universal “good” number. A 2% conversion rate might be excellent for high-value furniture but terrible for low-cost fashion accessories. But if your conversion rate is dropping, or if you’re spending money without seeing results, you need a systematic approach to diagnosing the problem.
The guide covers everything from search term analysis (are you actually showing up for relevant searches?) to landing page speed (are people bouncing before the page even loads?) to offer competitiveness (is someone else simply offering a better deal?).
What I find useful about this particular resource is that it’s structured as a diagnostic checklist rather than just a list of tips. Start at the top, work through systematically, and you’ll find where the problem actually is.
What This All Means Going Forward
The thread running through all of this is that Google Ads is moving further away from the granular, manual control we used to have and towards a model where the algorithm does more of the heavy lifting—but only if we give it the right conditions to work in.
Consolidation gives it more data. Proper conversion tracking gives it the right goals to optimise towards. Clean negative keywords keep it focused on relevant traffic. Good landing pages ensure that the traffic it delivers actually converts.
None of this means you can just set it and forget it. But it does mean the work is shifting from constant manual bid adjustments to building the right structure and then monitoring to ensure it’s working as intended.
If you’re still running an account structure you built five years ago with dozens of tightly segmented campaigns, Google’s clarification on consolidation is worth taking seriously. Not as a mandate to change everything overnight, but as a signal that the best practice has genuinely shifted. The algorithm has evolved. Your account structure probably should too.