5 Google Ads Limitations: When to Fix Them & When to Ignore Them

We often feel like Google Ads is trying to fight us. Whether it is limiting our budget, reach, or impressions, it can feel like the platform is holding back your performance. However, these constraints are actually the system telling you exactly what the trade-offs are to achieve the results you need.

In episode 103, host Jyll Saskin Gales breaks down five of the big limitations you might see in your Google Ads account. She'll teach you how to identify if a warning is actually a problem for your specific strategy, or if it is something you can safely ignore. Jyll will also cover practical steps on how to fix the issues that are actually hindering your performance so you can get the most out of your ad spend.

Key topics discussed in this episode:

• Limited by Budget: Understanding the difference between warnings, and how to manage spend
• Limited by Bid Strategy: Why bid limits might be defeating the purpose of your smart bidding strategy
• Limited by Search Volume: When to expand your keywords or location targeting, and when to stay niche
• Limited by Policy: Navigating sensitive interest categories like employment or housing and using non-linear targeting
• Limited by Quality: Why "rarely shown due to low quality" is a major issue and how to improve ad relevance and expected CTR

Do you have a question for Jyll? Drop a comment on Spotify, YouTube, or any of her social media posts, and she'll answer it for you in an upcoming episode.

You can get Inside Google Ads episode transcripts delivered to your inbox each week by signing up for free at https://free.jyll.ca/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

Google Ads Coaching
Need some expert help with your Google Ads strategy or optimizing your campaigns? Book a call with Jyll! Learn more at https://jyll.ca/pages/google-ads-coach?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

Inside Google Ads course
Join more than 400+ Google Ads practitioners in Jyll's Inside Google Ads membership course. You'll get exclusive access to JyllBot, and you can meet top industry experts at an exclusive live video call every single month. Learn more at https://learn.jyll.ca/iga?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

Resources mentioned in this episode
- What is Non-linear targeting? https://learn.jyll.ca/blog/what-is-non-linear-targeting-in-google-ads?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103
- The Insider newsletter: How to Improve Expected CTR https://learn.jyll.ca/newsletters/the-insider/posts/quality-score-expected-ctr?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

Read more about this topic on Jyll's Google Ads Blog
Is Your Google Ads Campaign "Limited by Search Volume"?  https://learn.jyll.ca/blog/is-your-google-ads-campaign-limited-by-search-volume?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

What does Eligible (Limited) Bid Strategy mean in Google Ads? https://learn.jyll.ca/blog/what-does-eligible-limited-bid-strategy-mean-in-google-ads?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

What should I do when my Google Ads campaign is limited by budget? https://learn.jyll.ca/blog/what-should-i-do-when-my-google-ads-campaign-is-limited-by-budget?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode103

Follow Jyll on social media
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyllsaskingales
https://www.youtube.com/@the_google_pro
https://www.instagram.com/the_google_pro
https://www.threads.net/@the_google_pro

Transcript

We often feel like Google Ads is trying to fight us, limiting our budget, limiting our reach, limiting our impressions. But these constraints are actually the system telling you exactly what the trade-offs are to achieve the results you want from your investment.

Today, I'm breaking down five of the big limitations you might see in your Google Ads account. How to know if it's actually a problem or not, and if so, how to fix it.

We're talking about budgets, bidding, search volume, quality, and policy.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.

This is Inside Google Ads: Episode 103, Limitations.

The most common limited warning you might see in Google Ads is limited by budget. And this one is also the most straightforward. It means your campaign doesn't have enough budget to get through the day.

So how do you know if this is actually a problem or not, if it's hurting performance? 

Look at the color. If you're limited by budget and the warning is yellow, that means it's just a recommendation. You can increase your budget or leave it where it is because you're using a maximize bid strategy, which by definition is always limited by budget. 

If however, your limited by budget warning is red, that's because you're either using a manual strategy or a target based strategy. And it is actually hindering your performance to not have enough budget to get through each day. In order to fix this, you can either increase your budget or you can decrease what you're trying to achieve with that budget.

I like to use the analogy of your budget as peanut butter. And if you're limited by budget, it means you have a little dollop of peanut butter left that is not going to be able to sufficiently spread a giant piece of bread. So get a smaller piece of bread! Target fewer keywords, fewer locations, fewer audiences, or restrict your bid target, which in turn will ensure that Google can't spend the full budget because it won't be profitable to do so. That's how to deal with limited by budget in Google Ads. 

Next, let's talk about limited by bid strategy. You might see this warning if you have bid limits in place, either because you're using manual CPC or you're using a smart bidding strategy, but you've put some CPC bid limits in place. Because you're not letting Google bid over a certain amount, you are losing out on auctions and therefore your performance is limited by your bid limits.

If you're happy with performance, you don't need to do anything. Generally, I don't like using bid limits because it really defeats the purpose of Smart Bidding. Some clicks are more expensive because Google projects them to be more valuable for your business. That's not a guarantee that every single one is going to be valuable. Google makes mistakes just like you would, but it's really important if you can to let your bidding algorithm do its best to learn and drive consistent results for your business. That is why I do generally recommend fixing this problem by removing bid limits.

By the way, if you need a little bit more detail about how to actually execute these different strategies and fixes I'm talking to you about, it’s all included for you as part of my Inside Google Ads course. You can learn more and join now at learn.jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or follow the link in the episode description.

The third limitation you might see is limited by search volume. And this just means Google can't find enough queries to match to your keywords. You'll likely see limited by search volume when you're using exact match keywords or if you're targeting a really small area. And this is one that I don't actually see as being a problem. If you are using only Exact Match or really niche keywords or targeting a small area, that's probably because that's your strategy. That's what you're trying to achieve. So this limitation is just letting you know why we're probably not spending your budget in full. And here's why you're not getting a lot of impressions. There just aren't a lot of searches to be had. 

So you can just leave this be, but if you're not achieving your goals, if you do need to drive more volume, then you can expand to more keywords, perhaps look at your search terms report and see if you want to expand that way. You can expand your match types, go from Exact to maybe Broad. I know that's a big strategic shift. You could target a bigger area. Or you could try adding a Demand Gen campaign with a custom segment based on search terms or go a little broader, maybe do an in-market segment or a life events segment to proactively reach more people who just may not actively be searching right now.

If your Search campaign is getting less than 10 clicks a day and it's because you're limited by search volume, then it's probably a good idea to think about different expansionist strategies to ensure you get enough volume for your business to get the results you need.

But if you want to stick where you are, small, limited, that's all you need. By all means, power to you.

The fourth limitation you might see is some kind of limited by policy. This may say something like eligible limited employment policy or eligible limited housing policy. And this means that Google has classified you as operating in some kind of sensitive interest category.

When you are in a sensitive interest category, you can't use any personalized advertising features. That means no remarketing at all, including no customer match, no custom segments, no lookalike segments. It's not a problem though, as long as you have been correctly categorized. 

So first thing's first, you're going to want to check the policies and determine, do you actually operate in a sensitive interest category? Because I've had a situation with a client before who spends like millions of dollars a month on Google Ads. They were classified as being in a certain sensitive interest category. And when I looked at it, I thought it was a little gray. So I suggested they reach out to their Google representative. They were able to get that policy flag lifted from their account. And they no longer had this limitation. But I would say that is more rare than common. 

Generally, if you do have one of these policies applied around personal beliefs, healthcare or whatever it might be, it is rightfully applied. And if so, you should have these limitations. It doesn't mean that your performance is going to be bad. It doesn't mean you're not going to be allowed to enter auctions. It just means there are certain signals and things that Google's algorithms can't take into account because it's either illegal or unethical to do. 

For example, in most countries, you're not allowed to discriminate against people in the hiring process based on age or gender. So if you're a job search site, you can't target based on age and gender. And Google's Smart Bidding algorithms aren't allowed to use age or gender when trying to optimize for which users to show ads to and which ones not to show ads to. 

Don't worry, there are tons of other signals that the bidding algorithms can take into account, which is just one more reason it's so important to use Smart Bidding, because it can optimize for things that you can't even see, never mind optimize for.

If you're in a sensitive interest category and you are having trouble reaching your ideal customers, I recommend using my non-linear targeting strategy. I'll put a link in the episode description to where I talk more about that. It's honestly one of my best things I've come up with, if I do say so myself. And it's a great way to ensure you can get over this limitation, still reach the people you want to reach to bring them to your business and become customers.

But for the most part, if you are limited by some kind of policy, there is no action needed. It's just the way it is to protect users, protect Google, and protect your business.

Non-linear targeting is actually one of the topics I spoke about at a lot of conferences this year. And one of the benefits of being part of my Inside Google Ads course is that I include recordings of all my conference presentations right there for you, exclusively for course members. 

So if you're not able to travel to see me in California, in Germany, in the UK, and all the other places I speak at search marketing conferences around the world, you can watch it all from the comfort of your home as an Inside Google Ads course member.

You can start watching right now at learn.jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L dot C-A or follow the link in the episode description.

The final limitation we're going to discuss today is limited by quality. And while you won't see a limited by quality status, you might see a status at the keyword level that says rarely shown due to low quality. Because remember, Google wants its users to have a good experience. So even if you're willing to pay a crap load of money, if users are not having a good experience with your ads, it's not enticing to them, they're not clicking, or they do click, but then they come right back to Google because there's a poor landing page experience, then Google's not going to want to show your ads anymore.

So if your keywords are rarely showing due to low quality, you are definitely going to want to try to fix this.

For your keywords that do have quality score, add the three explainer columns for expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Chances are if you're seeing this warning, all of those things are going to be below average. So the first one to fix is ad relevance because it's easiest to do so. Ensure you're including your keywords in your ad text and on your landing page. 

Next, you're going to want to try to improve your expected CTR. I'll put a link in the episode description to one of my The Insider newsletter articles where I tell you exactly how to do this.

To wrap up, when you see some kind of limited warning in your Google Ads account, don't freak out. It could be good, it could be bad, it could be neither, but it's just Google's way of trying to communicate something important with you. Or at least something Google deems important.

If you're limited by policy or if Google wants to recommend a higher budget, great, it’s good to be aware. If there's a serious quality issue or your bid limits are holding you back, yeah, you might want to do something about that. But at the end of the day, it is your Google Ads account, your campaigns, and your investment. So you are always free to do nothing, let the limitation lie, and keep on keeping on. No one knows your business or your strategy better than you do.

Today's Insider Challenge is this. Let's say you have a dozen keywords and half of them are showing and half of them are rarely shown due to low quality score. You try to improve the quality score on those keywords following some of the suggestions here today and after two months they're still rarely showing due to low quality. What do you do? Do you leave the keywords there? Do you pause them? Why? 

The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer. Just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real life Google Ads problem solving.

Last Episode's Challenge, Episode 102, was this. Imagine you're working with a B2B client who has a very long sales cycle, think six to nine months between first ad interaction and becoming a customer. They have a 540 day remarketing list, the longest you're allowed in GA4, and it has about 50,000 people on it. So you're targeting this 50,000 person list in Demand Gen, but the campaign has a very high CPA, and a very low conversion rate. It's just not performing well. What might you look into or try to optimize to improve the performance of this Demand Gen remarketing campaign?

Since I come up with the Insider Challenge, I normally answer it by myself. But I thought I'd have a little fun today and ask my JyllBot what it thinks. 

JyllBot is something I recently created exclusively for my Inside Google Ads course members. It has been trained on all of my podcast episodes, all of my LinkedIn posts, but also my paid content, like all of my Inside Google Ads and Google Ads for Beginners course materials, my bestselling book, et cetera.

So let's see how JyllBot solved this and see what I think and what you think.

First, JyllBot recommended checking optimized targeting. And honestly, truth! That is the number one culprit of a remarketing campaign not working, because optimized targeting is accidentally turned on. So good catch, JyllBot. 

Assuming that is not the issue here, next, JyllBot recommends segmenting by recency. Targeting everyone who visited in the last year and a half in one bucket is inefficient because a user who visited yesterday probably has different intent than someone who visited 15 months ago. So JyllBot recommends breaking this into smaller segments with different membership durations. 

Since we do have a long sales cycle, six to nine months, I would probably start with one that might be a six month list. And then maybe nine months, one year, et cetera. Then you can potentially bid differently on these different lists or, something JyllBot didn't say, but that I would add, maybe you only want to target certain lists in certain campaigns and not other ones.

Next, JyllBot recommends reviewing the offer and micro-conversions. So if we have a really high CPA, a low conversion rate, we might be asking for too much too soon from people who are in the middle of this long decision making process. Maybe you want to implement micro-conversions here, tracking actions that indicate progress in the journey, like downloading a white paper, viewing a pricing page, or signing up for a newsletter.

This will give your Smart Bidding a lot more data points to optimize for and see which users are actually engaged during that really long sales cycle.

And then finally, JyllBot recommends, and I agree, reviewing the creative. Since you are targeting these same people for a really long time, you don't just want to have generic messaging hitting them over and over and over again. You want to ensure that your images or video assets are speaking directly to different pain points of those B2B buyers. You want to change it over so they don't get fatigued.

And this is where that list segmentation can be useful because someone who's still in that kind of six to nine months, really different from someone who maybe signed up a year ago.

What do you think? Would you do the same or something different? 

And by the way, if you would like access to JyllBot, it's one of the many perks included exclusively for my Inside Google Ads members. You can join today at learn.jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L dot - C-A to get access to my Inside Google Ads course, monthly meet with me and guest experts, and the JyllBot.

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales, and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.