Your Google Ads plan: Merrowbank Linen

1. Open Google Ads in Expert mode. If you're creating a new account, choose Switch to Expert Mode on the first screen, then create the account without a campaign. If your account opened in the simplified view, switch it in the account menu.
2. Set the time zone and currency right the first time: (GMT+11:00) Australia/Melbourne, and Australian dollars. Google doesn't let you change the currency later.
3. Add billing. Automatic payments by card or direct debit. Add your ABN to the payments profile so your invoices show GST.
4. Complete advertiser verification when Google asks. Google may ask you to verify your business before or after your first ads run. Your verified name appears in Google's Ads Transparency Center. Use the business's legal name, exactly as it appears on your ABN record.
5. Give each person their own login. Add your team under Admin, then Access and security. Never share one login.

Open Admin, then Account settings, and set each of these.

1. Auto-apply recommendations: off, for every type. Open Recommendations, then Auto-apply, and untick each one. Section 2.8 explains why.
2. Account-level automated assets: off. Google can create sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets for you, and shows them "when predicted to improve your results". Switch them off in the account's asset settings. You're responsible for every word Google writes (section 10).
3. Auto-tagging: on. It adds Google's click ID to every ad click, which conversion tracking rely on.
4. Final URL suffix: leave it blank here. It carries this campaign's own tag, so it goes in each campaign's settings instead (section 4.1): a suffix set here would tag a brand campaign's visits as the main campaign's, and your stop and scale rules would count them.

Google bids to get more of whatever you count. So decide this before you build anything.

• One real event for each real result. Send the sale itself from the page people see once it's done: the order confirmation page. Never count page views, clicks or adds to cart as a sale.
• Browser and server, one shared ID. In the visitor's browser, the Google tag sends the events. A server connection sends them from your store or website, and catches the sales that browsers and cookie banners block. If you use both, give each event the same ID, such as the order number, so Google counts it once.
• A reload can count twice. Someone who refreshes the confirmation page, or comes back to it from an email, can fire the event again. The same shared ID stops that, so use it even if you only send from the browser.

Open Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, and add a new conversion action for your website.

Primary (the one Google bids on): Purchase. Value = the order value. Count: Every. Send a transaction ID with each order, so a reloaded confirmation page isn't counted twice.

Secondary (watch, don't bid on): Add to cart, Begin checkout. Useful for spotting a broken checkout. Never primary.

Turn everything else you find in the list to secondary. Don't delete it.

The Google tag is the code that tells Google Ads what visitors do after they click. Install it one way only. Two installs count every result twice (cause 2.3).

Shopify

Install the Google & YouTube app from the Shopify App Store, or open it if it's already installed (it is if your products already reach Merchant Center from Shopify), and connect your Google Ads account. It adds the Google tag and sets up purchase tracking, and it connects Merchant Center for your products. Then check Goals, then Conversions in Google Ads: the app's Purchase action should be primary, and any older Purchase action made by hand should be set to secondary.

Enhanced conversions and UTM tags

Turn on enhanced conversions. When someone buys, the tag sends a scrambled (hashed) copy of the email or phone number they typed, so Google can match more results to ad clicks. Since April 2026 Google accepts customer details from your website tag and from uploads at the same time, so you don't have to pick one method. Mention it in your privacy policy (section 10).

Tag every ad link, so your own reports can see these visits without relying on Google. In your campaign's settings, open Campaign URL options and paste this in Final URL suffix, with no "?" in front: utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=merrowbank-linen-shopping-nov26. Google adds it to every ad link in that campaign, your Shopping product links included, so you don't edit each link. Set it on the campaign, never in Account settings: a brand campaign gets its own (section 4.1). If Google also adds its own tracking code to links, leave that on: the UTM tags are for your reports, not theirs.

Check it on your first paid order. Open that order (or its session) in Shopify and check its campaign reads merrowbank-linen-shopping-nov26. If it shows another campaign name, such as one your feed app adds to free-listing links, your feed's own tags are winning over these: fix that before you judge anything, because your weekly count depends on it.

Where you'll see them:

• Shopify: Analytics, then Reports. Open a sessions or sales report and break it down by UTM source and campaign.
• Google Analytics 4: Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Set the table to "Session source / medium".

Your results live in Shopify. That's where the test is judged.

Link GA4 to Google Ads under Admin, then Linked accounts, so you can see what Google visitors do on your site. If you also import GA4 conversions, keep them secondary. One result counted by the Google tag and again by GA4 doubles your numbers (cause 2.3).

GA4 counts purchases only from the day it started collecting. If no order has come in since then, it shows 0 purchases. That's expected, not a fault, so don't reconnect GA4 or the Google & YouTube app to fix it.

Your purchases already tell Google which clicks became sales. What Google can't see is your baseline. Write it down before your first Google ad runs, from Shopify:

1. Weekly sales for the last 6 ordinary weeks before your first Google ad, as a weekly average (leave out sale weeks), every order in them, with nothing taken out.
2. Weekly orders for the same weeks.
3. Share of orders from returning customers, if your platform shows it.
4. Orders from Google's free listings in the same weeks: your products already show there, so some orders already come from Google before any ad runs. In Shopify, filter those weeks' orders by source Google.

That's your baseline. Once you've written it down, it replaces the A$1,400 a week from your answers in every rule in this plan. Section 7's store check reads your store's total sales against it, and Google's own count is only the orders from your paid clicks (their utm_campaign, section 3.2), so free-listing orders never pass as paid ones.

Shopping ads come from Google Merchant Center: your product list, with prices, images and stock, which Google checks before anything shows. Your status now: connected, no issues reported.

1. Use the Merchant Center account you have. Don't create a second one: a duplicate feed can trigger a review. Open it with the Google login the Google & YouTube app uses.
2. Set shipping and returns in Merchant Center to match your website exactly: costs, times, and your returns window. While you're there, check that your website and checkout links point at your current domain.
3. Your products reach Merchant Center through your platform: keep that connection live, and don't add a second feed. On Shopify, that's the Google & YouTube app (section 3.4).
4. Prices in AUD, GST included, exactly as on your product page. New Zealand later: once your product groups have been judged (section 7), add New Zealand in Merchant Center as a country your products show in, let Google convert your AUD prices if you don't keep NZD prices, and set your New Zealand shipping to match your site. Until then your campaign targets Australia only (section 4.5).
5. Link Merchant Center to Google Ads and accept the link in Google Ads. If the Google & YouTube app offers to create a paid campaign while you link, skip that step: it makes a Performance Max campaign with its own budget, and this plan builds Standard Shopping in Google Ads instead (section 4.5).
6. Fix every disapproved product in your store, not in Merchant Center. The next sync overwrites changes made there.

Check your feed app is up to date. Google's Content API for Shopping, which apps and plugins have used to send products to Merchant Center, reached its sunset on 18 August 2026 and has returned errors since 1 September 2026, ahead of a full shutdown in early 2027. Apps must now use the Merchant API (Google for Developers, "Content API for Shopping: deprecation and sunset", updated 10 September 2026). Update your feed app or plugin, then check in Merchant Center that your products have updated in the last few days. If they haven't, ask the app's maker whether it has moved to the Merchant API.

Google rejects or suspends stores whose sites don't show who they are, what things cost or how returns work. Section 9 lists the checks, section 10 the rules.

• Your business details on your site: business name, ABN, where your orders ship from, a way to contact you and your returns policy (sections 9 and 10).
• Your privacy policy says you use Google's advertising and measurement tools, including enhanced conversions if you turned them on (section 10).

Keep tests out of your results. Use Google's Tag Assistant (tagassistant.google.com) to check the Google tag loads on your product pages. Your order confirmation page only exists once someone buys, and Google Ads only shows a sale that came from a click on your Google ads, so check the Purchase conversion on real orders, in two steps. Before launch: an order that didn't come from a Google ad click (any order before you launch) moves the Purchase action in Goals, then Conversions, from "Unverified" to "No recent conversions": that means the tag fired, and Google Ads won't show that order itself. After launch: your first order tagged merrowbank-linen-shopping-nov26 shows in Google Ads as one conversion, with the same value and order number as in Shopify.

Don't place a test order or start a test checkout, ever: on your live store either one also fires your other ad platforms' live pixels and your email platform's events. Check the tag with the method above, then check the Purchase conversion on real orders as it sets out. Never test by clicking your own ads: you pay for the click, and it muddies the numbers.

Then check the conversion's status in Goals, then Conversions. It shows "Unverified" until the tag is seen, then "No recent conversions", then "Recording conversions" once one arrives from an ad click: a sale from a normal visit fires the tag but never shows as a Google Ads conversion. Give it 24 hours before you worry.

Check every line before you publish. Most wasted Google spend comes from one of these left on its default.

Search partners off. Display expansion off. Location option: Presence.

Campaign name: Merrowbank Linen | Shopping | Sheet set + Linen quilt cover set | Nov 2026

Then check it stayed that way. Google adds features and changes defaults often. Once a month, re-open the settings and read this table again (section 7).

You don't start on Google's smartest bidding. You start where your data is, and move up as it grows.

Your break-even per sale.

1. What your lead product keeps. On the Stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229, it keeps A$112 ex GST after product cost, shipping and fees, before ads: that's your break-even per sale. Pay Google more than that for its sale and you lose money on it.
2. Each product keeps its own: Stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229 keeps A$112 ex GST (break-even ROAS 2.1x); Linen quilt cover set at A$259 keeps A$128 ex GST (break-even ROAS 2.1x); Linen pillowcase pair at A$69 keeps A$25 ex GST (break-even ROAS 2.8x). A sale of one product is worth that product's figure, not the average order's, so every limit, target and stop figure for one product uses its own (the table below).
3. Break-even ROAS: 2.1x on the Stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229, on sales including GST. Every A$1 of ads on it has to bring back at least this much in sales, counted in your store.
4. Your target: A$89 per sale on the Stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229 (A$103 on the Linen quilt cover set), each 80% of that product's own break-even. It sits below break-even on purpose. That leaves room for refunds, and for the sales an ad platform counts that would have happened anyway.
5. On your A$185 average order: it keeps A$88 (47%), its break-even, a break-even ROAS of 2.1x. No product-group limit, target or stop uses it; only your weekly store check does, because it counts all your store's sales (section 7).

Your break-even per click.

A click is a visit, not a customer. How much you can pay for a click depends on how many of those visitors buy:

Break-even cost per click = break-even cost per sale × the share of visitors who buy

• Break-even cost per sale: A$112, on the Stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229 (A$88 on your A$185 average order)
• Visitors who buy: 1% (typical, not yours: replace it with your own once you know it)
• Your break-even cost per click: A$112 × 1% = A$1.12
• The expected cost per click for your industry: A$0.50–1.50, a starting estimate, not your own figure

Pay more than A$1.12 a click and, at that visitor rate, each sale costs more than your break-even. Visitors from ads can act more or less often than your usual visitors. Treat this as a starting line, and replace the rate with your own after four weeks of ad traffic.

Your product groups and their limits. A Shopping click lands on one product at its own price, so each product gets its own limit, set at its target: its target cost per sale × the visitor rate, never above the top of the usual range, and cut down to the cent. At the limit a sale costs about its target if visitors buy at that rate; if fewer buy, it costs more, and your stop rule (section 7) catches it on your own orders. Four good weeks at the target can pass your scale rule (section 7). Each limit is that product group's maximum CPC bid (section 4.5, step 7).

Excluded: a click on it is worth less than A$0.50, the bottom of the usual range (the Linen pillowcase pair A$0.25), even at the most it can pay, so it would lose money on almost every click. It still shows in your free listings. Everything else is excluded at launch: your answers price 3 of your 38 products, so the plan can't set a limit that pays for the other 35, and your A$49 a day (about 55 clicks) is best kept on the two product groups above (cause 2.13). Give one its own group, with its own limit (its target × the visitor rate), once you've priced it, and only while every group you have still gets clicks every day.

The ladder. Move up one rung at a time, only at your weekly check, and only after two weeks on the rung you're on.

Your start: Manual CPC, with a limit on each product group. You have 12 conversions in the last 30 days, so Google doesn't have enough to bid on its own yet.

Why each limit is what it is: it's that product's target cost per sale × the visitor rate, or the top of the expected range for your industry if that's lower. Set at the target, a click leaves room for refunds and for the sales Google counts that would have happened anyway, as long as visitors buy at the rate the limit assumes: your stop rule (section 7) checks that on your own orders. Pay more than the break-even click and every click loses money on average; pay more than the top of the range and you're overpaying for the same searches. Maximise clicks has one limit for the whole campaign, so it would give a cheap product your lead product's limit: that's why Shopping starts on Manual CPC.

Then Performance Max, only once you reach about 30 purchases in 30 days (section 4.7).

Rules for every rung.

• One change at a time. A new bid strategy restarts learning (Google Ads Help, "About Smart Bidding learning").
• Two weeks before you judge a new rung. Google asks for this.
• Step back down if conversions fall below the rung's floor for two weeks running.

You run one campaign. Your answers don't show others bidding on your name, so someone who types it finds you anyway: your website comes up, with your products in the free listings. Your business name goes in as a negative keyword on this campaign itself (section 4.1), so your budget goes on people who haven't found you yet.

• Main: Merrowbank Linen | Shopping | Sheet set + Linen quilt cover set | Nov 2026, A$49 a day.

Check once a week, since people already search for you by name: search your own name on your phone. If a competitor's ad appears above you, add a brand campaign at about 10% of your budget, with exact match on your name.

0. Before you build, read your last 90 days. In your current campaigns, note the average cost per click, which products sold, and the search terms that brought a purchase. Add the searches you'd never want as negatives in the new campaign (section 6.2).
1. Publish late in the day, with the campaign set to start at 12:00 am.
2. Next morning, check the status. Campaign: "Eligible". Ads: "Approved", or "Under review", which usually clears within a business day. "Approved (limited)" or "Disapproved": see section 11.
3. Check spend after the first full day. Google can spend up to twice the daily budget on a single day. That's normal. Over a month it stays within about 30.4 times your daily budget.
4. For 7 days, touch nothing except negative keywords.
5. After 14 days, do your first full weekly review (section 7), against the rules in section 1.

Shopping ads show a product's photo, title, price and your store name, straight from Merchant Center. You don't write them or choose keywords: Google matches searches to your product data. So your feed (section 5.5) does the work an ad does.

1. New campaign. Choose the Sales objective, then Shopping, then your linked Merchant Center account, with Australia as the country of sale. New Zealand waits until your product groups have been judged (section 7), then goes in through Merchant Center (section 3.7).
2. Choose Standard Shopping, not Performance Max. Google will suggest Performance Max. You'll get there in section 4.7.
3. Networks: untick Search partners, and untick YouTube, Gmail and Discover if offered.
4. Locations: Australia only for this test. Add New Zealand once your product groups have been judged (section 7), and until then count only Australian orders tagged merrowbank-linen-shopping-nov26, location option Presence.
5. Budget: A$49 a day.
6. Bidding: Manual CPC, with a limit on each product group (section 4.2).
7. Product groups: subdivide "All products" by item ID, so each product in the table in section 4.2 is its own product group, and "Everything else" holds the rest. Set each group's maximum CPC bid to its limit in that table, and set every group marked "Excluded" to Excluded. Your Stonewashed linen sheet set comes in queen and king, and each one is its own item ID in Merchant Center: add all 2 at its A$0.89 limit, and judge them together, on their combined spend and orders (section 7). Shopping then carries your Stonewashed linen sheet set and Linen quilt cover set.
8. Negative keywords: apply your shared list (section 6.2), then add your store name, "merrowbank linen", as a negative on this campaign itself (section 4.6).
9. Final URL suffix: in Campaign URL options, paste utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=merrowbank-linen-shopping-nov26, with no "?" in front (section 3.4). It goes on this campaign, never in Account settings, so only this campaign's orders carry its tag.
10. Publish late in the day, starting 12:00 am tomorrow.

After four weeks, split your product groups further by what sells. Give a product that sells its own product group, with its own limit (its target × the visitor rate), so you can see its cost per purchase. A product that takes clicks but doesn't sell is your stop rule's to judge (section 7), on its own orders, never a limit to trim week by week.

From a client's accountA client's homewares store ran Google shopping ads. On spend of A$8,890, then A$9,540, purchases rose from 183 to 219 and average order value from A$153 to A$163. Cost per purchase fell from A$48.58 to A$43.56, and attributed revenue went from A$27,999 to A$35,697: ROAS of 3.15x, then 3.74x. Attributed revenue is what Google credits to its ads, not profit. That's what happened between the two periods, not proof of cause.

Nobody else appears to be bidding on your store's name, so you don't pay for it. Add your store name as a negative keyword in the Shopping campaign: someone who types your name finds your website anyway, and paying for that click makes Shopping look better than it is (cause 2.7). Search your own name once a week, since people already search for you by name. If another store's ads appear above you, add a small brand campaign (section 4.3): about 10% of your budget, exact match on your name, Manual CPC with a low limit, and its own Final URL suffix in its campaign settings, utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=merrowbank-linen-brand-nov26, so its orders never count toward Shopping's stop and scale rules. It takes your shared negative list as it is: your store name sits as a negative on the Shopping campaign alone, never in the shared list, so it never blocks your brand campaign.

Performance Max runs your products across Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from one campaign, with Google choosing where. It needs data to do that well, and it's harder to see what you paid for.

Your rule: about 30 purchases in 30 days from Google first. You have 12 purchases from Google in the last 30 days. Not yet. Until then, Performance Max would be learning from too few sales, and its reports would show you less of where the money went. Keep to Standard Shopping and check again at your monthly review.

1. Change prices in your store. The sale price flows to Merchant Center with your next sync. Use a sale price and its dates in your feed, so Google shows the right price on each day.
2. Google shows a sale price in Shopping ads only if the rules fit: the full price applied for at least 30 of the last 200 days, the discount is between 5% and 90%, and your page shows both prices. Even then the annotation isn't certain. Don't fake one by inflating the regular price first: that's against Google's rules and Australian law (section 10).
3. On Manual CPC, a sale changes limits, never the budget. Manual CPC has no learning to protect, so where a product's sale price can't pay for its usual limit, lower that product group's limit to its sale-price figure for the sale days only, with automated rules set up ahead, then put it back (section 8).
4. Promotions (a code or "spend $X, get $Y") can be added in Merchant Center if you meet Google's rules.

Shopping has no keywords. Google matches searches to your product titles and data (section 5.5), so you steer it with negative keywords (section 6.2) and your weekly search terms review (section 6.6).

Negative keywords stop your ad showing on searches you don't want. Make one list and apply it to every campaign: Tools, then Shared library, then Negative keyword lists.

Start with these, typed with their quotes: "for free" · "giveaway" · "free printable" · "jobs" · "careers" · "diy" · "how to make" · "candle making" · "wax" · "wholesale" · "second hand" · "rental" · "hire" · "repair" · "upholstery" · "sewing pattern" · "how to clean" · "meaning" · "course" · "plans" · "colouring"

The quotes make each one phrase match: a two-word negative blocks only searches with those words together, in that order. Typed without quotes, a negative is broad match: it blocks every search that holds all its words, in any order and with other words between them.

Add to it every week from your search terms (section 7). Take a term off only if you start selling what it describes. Your business name isn't on this list: it goes on your main campaign itself (section 4.1), so a brand campaign you add later can take this list as it is.

Australia only for this test. Add New Zealand once your product groups have been judged (section 7), and until then count only Australian orders tagged merrowbank-linen-shopping-nov26. Location option: Presence (section 4.1).

• Where you ship: Australia and New Zealand. Don't target a country your shipping settings in Merchant Center don't cover.

All hours, all days: online stores sell around the clock. Review hours after 8 weeks.

Audiences go on "Observation", never "Targeting". They let you see which groups convert without narrowing who sees your ads.

• No customer lists and no remarketing lists at launch. Customer lists (Customer Match) can only be used to observe or exclude in an account like yours. Targeting with them needs 90 days of history and more than US$50,000 of lifetime spend, and every upload adds privacy duties. So this plan doesn't use them.

Shopping has no keywords. Google matches searches to your product titles and data. So negatives do all the steering.

• Read the search terms weekly (section 7), sorted by cost. Add negatives for searches you'd never want: other brands you don't stock, "diy", "how to make", "candle making", "wax", "wholesale", "second hand", and products you don't sell. Keep "free" off the list if you offer free shipping: people searching for it are often buyers.
• Add your store name as a negative in the Shopping campaign (section 4.6).
• Searches that sell: don't add them as negatives, even when they cost more than you'd like. Your stop rule (section 7) judges the product group on its own orders, and a limit moves only once your own visitor rate supports it (section 4.2).

• Each product's link opens that product's page, at the same price as your feed, never the homepage.
• The price and the delivery cost, or your free-shipping line, in the first screen on a phone, matching your feed.
• Add to cart above the fold on a phone, with sizes or options clear before the tap.
• Loads fast on a phone. Under about 3 seconds for the main content.
• Who you are: business name, ABN, where your orders ship from, and a way to contact you. Google treats a false or hidden business identity as misrepresentation.
• A privacy policy that mentions Google's advertising and measurement tools.
• Your order confirmation page fires your Purchase conversion once per order (section 3.3).
• Merchant Center matches the site: prices (GST included), stock, shipping costs and times, and your returns policy, word for word.
• Where your orders ship from, stated plainly. Google treats hiding the real dispatch location to look local as misrepresentation, and suspends for it.
• Returns and refunds page linked from every product page and the footer, with the window, condition and who pays return postage.
• Contact page with an email or phone number, not only a form.
• Sale prices are real and the "was" price is one you charged (section 10).
• Checkout shows the full price, including shipping, before payment.

• Bed sizes by name, with the fitted sheet's pocket depth in cm.
• A plain product shot and a room shot for every product; every colourway; a scale reference.
• Materials and care, named exactly: fabric composition, linen weight, and how to care for it.
• Delivery cost before checkout, and lead times.
• Returns in plain words, and that faulty items are always covered (section 10).
• Swatches or samples, if you sell fabric or colour-critical pieces.
• Real reviews with customers' own photos.
• Buy now, pay later near the price, if offered.
• Mobile speed: room galleries and autoplay video sized for phones.
• Business name, ABN, contact details and returns address consistent across footer, terms and policies.

• Merchant Center checks who you are. Google treats a false or hidden business identity, business name or contact details as misrepresentation, along with hiding the full cost before or after purchase, and refusing returns your own policy allows. It calls these "egregious" and can suspend your Merchant Center account for them. Section 9 lists the checks.
• Say where your orders ship from. Google treats hiding the real dispatch location to look local as misrepresentation, and suspends for it. That matters most for stores that ship from overseas suppliers or print-on-demand partners.
• Product data must match the product page: price (GST included), availability, condition, shipping cost.
• Sale prices in Shopping ads follow Google's rules. The full price must have applied for at least 30 of the last 200 days, the discount must be between 5% and 90%, and your page must show both prices. Google may still not show a sale annotation. Never raise a price to make a later "sale" look bigger: Australian law forbids it too (below).
• Some products are restricted or not allowed, including counterfeits, some health and therapeutic products, weapons and dangerous goods.

• Keywords: you can bid on a competitor's name as a keyword. Those clicks usually cost more and convert less.
• Ad text: using another business's name in your ad text can be blocked if the owner complains, and it must never suggest you're them or that they endorse you. Don't put another business's name in your ads.
• Australian law goes further: anything that suggests you're connected with, endorsed by or the same as another business can be misleading conduct, whatever Google allows.
• Platform names: say you advertise "on Google" in plain words, but never suggest Google endorses, certifies or partners with you unless it formally does.

• You're responsible for them. Automated assets, AI Max's text customisation and Performance Max's generated text and images are your ads, in Google's terms and in Australian law. A claim Google writes from your website, such as an old price or a service you've stopped, is still your claim.
• That's why they start switched off in this plan (sections 3.2 and 4.1). If you turn any on later, read every line Google adds before it runs, and again each month.
• Images must show what you sell or do. No AI-made images of products that look different from what you ship.

Every online store: the price, sale, review, origin and returns rules are under "Rules for every online store", at the end of this section.

Product safety (mandatory standards; check productsafety.gov.au before you list)

• Anything else you sell: search its product type on productsafety.gov.au for mandatory standards and bans before you list it.

Material claims

• "100% linen", "French linen" and "organic cotton" only with supplier proof, and certification for "organic".
• Dimensions and colour in your ads must match the product you deliver.

Prices and sales

1. "Was" prices must be real: a price customers actually paid, for a reasonable period before the sale. There's no fixed number of days; it depends on the product and how often its price changes (ACCC, "Advertising and selling guide"). False price claims breach the Australian Consumer Law (ss 18, 29(1)(i)). An ugg retailer paid A$39,600 for "was" prices it hadn't charged (ACCC, June 2026); a bedding supplier was ordered to pay A$15 million after 58 of 74 products never sold at their strikethrough price (ACCC v Emma Sleep, Federal Court, 24 Apr 2026).
2. "Sitewide" means the whole site. A jeweller, a homewares store and an online hair and beauty retailer each paid A$19,800 over Black Friday "sitewide" sales with exclusions (ACCC, 11 Jun 2025).
3. Show delivery costs before checkout, including any minimum charge you know of (ACCC, "Advertising and selling guide", component pricing; Australian Consumer Law s 48), with "free shipping" conditions beside the claim. New drip-pricing rules and a ban on unfair trading practices start on 1 July 2027 (Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026). Get ready now: wherever you show a price, say whether extra charges apply and how much they are, or how they're worked out.

Reviews, origin and green claims

• No fake reviews, no hiding genuine bad ones, and disclose incentives (ACCC, "Online reviews: a guide for business and review platforms"). Paid or gifted creator posts must say so: a photo-book retailer paid A$39,600 over undisclosed paid influencer reviews (ACCC, March 2026).
• "Made in Australia" needs substantial transformation here (ACCC, "Country of origin claims and the Australian Consumer Law", 2022). Packing or relabelling imported goods here isn't enough. "Designed in Australia" is fine if true and nothing else (flags, maps, "Aussie made" wording) implies it's made here.
• No broad green words ("sustainable", "eco-friendly") unless qualified and provable (ACCC, "Making environmental claims: a guide for business", Dec 2023).

Returns, images and payment

• Never "no refunds", even on sale items: faulty goods are always covered. Honour your own change-of-mind policy (ACCC, consumer guarantees guidance).
• Images are claims, AI-made ones included: colour, size and detail must match what you ship.
• Buy now, pay later: the provider's wording, and never "interest-free" without its conditions (ASIC 25-193MR, 3 Sep 2025).

1. Read the reason. Hover over the status in the ad's row. Google names the policy.
2. Fix the ad or the landing page, not the wording around the rule. Section 10 covers the policies that catch your industry most.
3. Trade mark limits: an ad using another business's trade mark can be limited if the owner has complained. Remove it from your ad text (section 10).
4. Appeal only if you're sure the ad meets the policy as written: from the ad's status, choose to appeal.
5. Don't create the same ad again and again. Repeated attempts can count against your account.

1. Open Merchant Center, then the products' issues. Fix each product in your store and let it sync.
2. Account suspended for misrepresentation: your site is missing who you are, how to contact you, real prices, shipping or returns, or makes a claim Google can't verify. Fix the site first (section 9), then request a review.
3. Request one review, with everything fixed. Repeated review requests can lead to a longer wait.

1. Status says "Unverified" or "No recent conversions"? Check with Tag Assistant that the Google tag loads on your product pages (section 3.9). "No recent conversions" is normal until your first real order from an ad click; if one came in and nothing recorded, see step 3.
2. Fires twice? Two installs, or a reload: remove one, add a transaction ID (cause 2.3).
3. Doesn't fire? The Google & YouTube app didn't add the Purchase conversion, or your order confirmation page opens on another domain. Check Goals, then Conversions, and keep one install only (section 3.4).
4. Fires, but Google shows nothing? Allow up to a day, and remember Google only counts results that follow an ad click.
5. A cookie banner blocks it? Check that accepting the banner lets the tag load.

1. Normal, some days. Google can spend up to twice your daily budget on one day and less on others. Judge by the week.
2. Every day? A product group's limit is too high, or broad searches are buying clicks. Check the search terms (section 7).
3. Don't raise the budget to "keep ads on all day" until your cost per purchase is under target.

1. Google filters invalid clicks and doesn't charge for the ones it catches. Add the "Invalid clicks" column to see them.
2. A cluster from one area or at odd hours? Check your location option is Presence.
3. Still sure? Request an invalid click investigation through Google's form, with the dates and details.
4. Don't click your own ads, and ask your staff not to.

1. Payment declined: fix the card or direct debit in billing. Ads stop until it clears.
2. "Suspicious payment activity" or "Unpaid balance": follow the steps on the suspension notice exactly. Use the same business details as your verification.
3. Advertiser verification overdue: ads stop when the deadline passes. Complete it, then they resume.
4. Circumventing systems or misrepresentation: the most serious kinds. Don't open a new account to get around a suspension: Google treats that as a further breach.

1. Tracking first (above). Is it recording?
2. Search terms: are you paying for the right searches?
3. Landing page and offer (cause 2.10): plenty of clicks, few results means the page or the offer.
4. Merchant Center (cause 2.11): disapproved or limited products show less, or not at all.
5. Then the maths: if a purchase costs more than its product's break-even (section 4.2) after four weeks of clean data, change the offer or stop. Don't raise the budget.

• Auto-apply recommendations: a setting that lets Google make its recommended changes to your account without asking. Off in this plan.
• Auto-tagging: adds Google's click ID (GCLID) to every ad click, so conversions can be matched to the click.
• Automated assets: sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets Google can create from your website at account level. Off in this plan.
• Break-even cost per click: the most a click can cost before, on average, it costs more than the sale it leads to keeps.
• Break-even ROAS: the sales each A$1 of ads must bring back before the ads stop losing money.
• Conversion: a result you've told Google to count, such as a purchase.
• Conversion action (primary or secondary): one thing Google counts. Bidding uses primary actions; secondary ones are only reported.
• Cost per click (CPC): what you pay when someone clicks your ad.
• Customer Match: uploading your own customer list, hashed, to Google. Accounts like yours can only use it to observe or exclude. Not used in this plan at launch.
• Display expansion: a setting that also shows your Search ads on websites and apps. Google is moving it into account-level channel settings (channel prioritisation) from October 2026. Off in this plan.
• Enhanced conversions: sends a hashed copy of the email or phone number a customer typed with a conversion, so Google can match more of them to ad clicks.
• Expert mode: the full Google Ads interface, with every setting. The alternative is Smart mode (Smart campaigns).
• Final URL: the page your ad sends people to.
• Final URL suffix: text Google adds to the end of every ad link in a campaign, here your UTM tags. You set it in each campaign's settings, under Campaign URL options, so each campaign carries its own tag.
• Free listings: your products shown on Google's Shopping tab and other Google pages at no cost, from your Merchant Center products.
• Google tag: the code on your website that tells Google Ads (and Google Analytics) what visitors do.
• Learning period: the time after a bid strategy starts or changes while Google's automated bidding adjusts. Results swing more during it.
• Location options (Presence or Interest, Presence): whether ads reach only people in or regularly in your area (Presence), or also people searching about it from elsewhere (Presence or Interest, Google's default).
• Manual CPC: you set the most you'll pay for a click in each product group.
• Maximise clicks: automated bidding for the most clicks within your budget, with an optional limit per click.
• Maximise conversion value: automated bidding for the most sales value within your budget, with an optional target ROAS: Standard Shopping's only conversion bidding.
• Merchant Center: Google's tool that holds your product data for Shopping ads and free product listings.
• MER (marketing efficiency ratio): total store sales ÷ total ad spend, from your store's own numbers.
• Negative keyword: a word or phrase that stops your ad showing on searches that contain it.
• Optimisation score: Google's estimate of how well your account is set up to perform. It rises as you apply or dismiss Google's recommendations. It doesn't measure your profit.
• Performance Max: a campaign type that runs across Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps from one budget, with Google choosing where.
• Product group: a set of products in a Standard Shopping campaign that shares one maximum cost-per-click bid. This plan gives each product you priced its own.
• ROAS (return on ad spend): sales Google credits to your ads ÷ ad spend. Useful for comparing campaigns, not for judging profit.
• Search partners: websites that partner with Google to show search ads. Included by default in new Search campaigns; off in this plan.
• Search terms report: what people actually typed before your ad showed and they clicked. Read it weekly.
• Smart campaign: Google's simplified campaign type, with keyword themes instead of keywords and few settings.
• Standard Shopping: a Shopping campaign where you control bids by product group and see search terms. This plan starts stores here.
• Target CPA: a bid setting that aims for an average cost per conversion you choose.
• Target ROAS: a bid setting that aims for an average return on ad spend you choose, entered as a percentage.
• Transaction ID: an order number sent with a conversion, so the same one isn't counted twice.
• UTM tags: labels added to your ad links (source, medium, campaign) so your own reports can see where visits came from.