If your cost per lead has been creeping up month over month and nothing about your business has changed, the problem is almost never "the algorithm." It's usually one of four things quietly compounding in the background of your account.
1. Search term drift
Broad and phrase match keywords pull in new search terms every week. Without a regular negative keyword review, you end up paying for searches that were never a good fit for your business — and Google keeps serving more of them because your ads are still getting clicks, even if those clicks rarely convert.
2. Stale ad copy
Ads that ran well for the first two months start losing relevance as competitors update theirs. A quality score built on strong click-through rate six months ago doesn't hold if your copy hasn't moved since — and a falling quality score directly increases what you pay per click.
3. Landing page mismatch
If the offer on your landing page doesn't quite match what the ad promised, your conversion rate drops. Google's bidding algorithms respond to that drop by needing to spend more to hit the same number of leads, because each click is now less likely to turn into one.
4. Bidding on the wrong signal
If your "conversion" is simply a form submission rather than a qualified lead, Smart Bidding will happily optimize for junk. The fix is feeding the algorithm a signal that reflects actual lead quality, not just volume.
The fix, in order
- Audit search terms weekly for the first month of any new campaign
- Refresh ad copy on a set cadence rather than "when it feels stale"
- Confirm message match between the ad and the landing page it points to
- Where possible, feed offline conversion data back into Google Ads so the algorithm optimizes for leads that actually become customers — not just form fills
Most accounts I audit have at least two of these four problems running at the same time. Fixing them rarely requires a bigger budget — it usually just requires someone checking the account on a schedule instead of letting it run unattended.
