Most Google Ads accounts inherited from previous agencies share the same structural problems. Understanding these patterns helps you diagnose accounts faster, communicate the issues to clients clearly, and prioritize the fixes that will move performance most.
The Most Common Structural Problems
1. Everything in One Campaign
The most common issue is a lack of campaign segmentation. All keywords — regardless of intent, product category, or match type — are crammed into a single campaign. This makes budget allocation impossible, bidding inefficient, and reporting meaningless.
2. Broad Match Without Controls
Broad match keywords without a negative keyword framework will drain budget on irrelevant queries. Many inherited accounts have broad match keywords running without any negative keyword list, resulting in significant wasted spend on queries that have nothing to do with the client's business.
3. Ad Group Dilution
Ad groups with 20+ keywords across multiple themes make it impossible to write relevant ad copy. The result is low Quality Scores, poor CTR, and higher CPCs. The fix is tighter ad groups with 5–10 closely related keywords and ad copy that speaks directly to the intent.
How to Approach a Restructure
Before touching anything, audit the account thoroughly. Understand what's working, what's wasting spend, and what the client's actual business goals are. A restructure done without this context can disrupt performance that was working.
- Export search term reports for the last 90 days
- Identify top-performing keywords and protect them
- Map out the new campaign structure before building
- Build the new structure in parallel before pausing the old one
- Monitor closely for the first 2–4 weeks after launch
Communicating the Restructure to Clients
Clients can be nervous about structural changes to accounts that are generating results. The key is to frame the restructure in terms of what it enables — better budget control, more relevant ad copy, cleaner reporting — rather than what was wrong before.
A well-communicated restructure builds trust. A poorly communicated one creates anxiety, even if the work is excellent.