The first 30 days of a new Google Ads account, as a log

The first thirty days of a new Google Ads account produce almost no results and almost all of the decisions, and the sequence matters more than the speed: nothing spends until tracking has been proved, nothing is judged until it has a hundred clicks, and no bid strategy is touched during its learning period however tempting the early numbers look. What follows is the log of a typical first month for a Manchester service business, written as the days happen, so you know what should be going on inside an account you have just paid someone to build.

Before day one: the account, the access, the structure

The account is created on the client's own Google login with the client's card on billing, and we are added as a manager the client can remove. The structure is written in a document before anything is built: one campaign per goal and budget, ad groups by intent, the boroughs to target, the negative lists to attach, the conversion actions to create. The client reads it and says yes. If there is an old account, its Search Terms report for the last ninety days is read first, because it is a free list of what not to bid on.

Day 1: build, but do not switch on

Campaigns, ad groups, keywords at phrase and exact match, responsive search ads written per ad group, sitelinks, callouts and the call asset. Location targeting by named borough with presence only. Search partners off, display expansion off, auto-apply off. The shared negative lists attached: places, education and jobs, information, the products not sold. Everything is built paused. The conversion actions are created but not yet trusted.

Day 2: prove the tracking

We submit the form, make the call, place the test booking, and watch each one arrive in the account exactly once. A thank-you page that counts on refresh is fixed today, not discovered in month three. Consent Mode is checked against the cookie banner. GA4 shows the same events. Only when every action has fired once and no action has fired twice does the campaign get switched on, usually in the afternoon, with the daily budget set to what the structure document said.

Days 3 to 7: the daily read

In the first week the Search Terms report is read every day, because the first hundred searches reveal what the keyword list attracts in this city that it did not attract in the plan. Students, job seekers, the wrong boroughs and the wrong service arrive within forty-eight hours. Each goes into the right shared list the day it appears. The ads are checked for policy approval; a disapproved headline about a regulated service is rewritten. Impressions and clicks are watched for one thing only: that they exist and are arriving from the right places.

Day 5: the first honest numbers, ignored

By day five there are clicks and perhaps a conversion, and the temptation is to react. We do not. Twenty clicks in an ad group is noise, and a conversion on day four proves nothing except that the tracking works. The bid strategy is Maximise Conversions with no target, because a target set before there is data is a guess dressed as a decision, and it is in its learning period. Changing it now restarts the learning and throws the week away.

Day 8: the first weekly Search Terms review

The daily read becomes the Monday routine. Ninety per cent of the wasted searches were caught in week one; now the read is for the ones that arrive slowly, and for the converting searches in the wrong ad group, which become new keywords or a new page rather than negatives. The locations report is opened for the first time, and if Oldham has spent a fifth of the budget and produced nothing, that is noted, not yet acted on.

Days 9 to 14: ads and pages

With two weeks of impressions the responsive search ads show which headlines serve and which never do. Assets marked low are rewritten; nothing is pinned unless a regulated claim has to stay in place. The landing page is re-measured on a phone, because a fast page on day one has been known to be a slow one by day ten after a plugin update. The call asset's hours are checked against the hours the phone was actually answered, read from the call report.

Day 15: the mid-month note

A short note to the client: spend so far, clicks, the searches excluded, the conversions and where they came from, and one question, which leads were real. It is not a report; it is a check that the account and the business agree about what an enquiry is. If the client says the three calls were all from people asking whether we cover Bolton, the location shape changes today.

Days 16 to 28: the first real decisions

Ad groups pass a hundred clicks and can be judged. One is paused because its searches are cheap and never convert; another gets its own campaign because it converts and is being starved by a bigger neighbour. Impression share is read for the first time: lost to budget with a good cost per conversion is a case for more spend, which the day-30 note will make with the number; lost to rank is a case for better ads and a better page, not more money. The bid strategy stays as it is.

Day 30: the note that sets up month two

The first written report is honest about what a month can and cannot show. It carries spend, clicks, cost per click by borough, conversions by type, cost per lead, the negatives added, the Google recommendations declined and why, and what changes on day 31. Typically: a target cost per action is set only if there are enough conversions to support one; the daily budget moves only if impression share says so; a campaign that has not produced a lead in a month is given a reason and a deadline. The client is asked again which leads were real, because that answer is what turns cost per lead into a decision.

1. Nothing spent until tracking was proved, on day two.
2. Search terms read daily for a week, then weekly for good.
3. No bid strategy or budget change during learning, however the early numbers looked.
4. No ad group judged on fewer than a hundred clicks.
5. One question asked of the client twice: which leads were real.

A first month run this way looks slow from the outside, because there is no headline number to celebrate. It is the month the account learns what a Manchester customer for this business actually types, and every month after it is cheaper because of it.

The next sixty days are on the first 90 days page, and if you want the log written for your account, tell us what the ads should produce.