Google Ads Search Campaign Setup Checklist

Before you launch a Google Ads Search campaign, set up conversion tracking, then check five groups of settings: networks, locations, bidding, keywords, and ads. Most wasted spend in a new campaign comes from defaults nobody looked at. This checklist follows the order you meet each setting, with Google’s help article for each.

Key facts (as of October 2026)

Smart Bidding requires conversion tracking (Google Ads Help).

Search partners are included by default in Search campaigns (Google Ads Help).

The default location option is “Presence or interest,” not “Presence” (Google Ads Help).

A responsive search ad takes 3 to 15 headlines and 2 to 4 descriptions (Google Ads Help).

A campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget on a given day (Google Ads Help).

Step 1: Have you set up conversion tracking?

Do this before you build the campaign. Without it, you can’t tell which keywords bring results, and you can’t use Smart Bidding.

Google Ads can track website actions, app actions, phone calls, and offline conversions you import (Google Ads Help). For most small businesses the first one is a form submission, a purchase, or a call.

Decide what counts as a conversion. Pick the action that matters to the business, such as a booked call, not a page view.
Create the conversion action in Google Ads and add the Google tag to your site.
Check the status. New tags show “Unverified” or “Inactive” at first and change to “Active” after the first recorded conversion or a successful test (Google Ads Help).
Check which actions are Primary. Only primary actions count in the “Conversions” column and are used for bidding. Secondary actions are for observation and appear in “All conversions” (Google Ads Help).

Complete a test conversion yourself and confirm it shows up before launch.

Step 2: Which objective and conversion goals?

When you create the campaign, Google Ads asks for an objective: Sales, Leads, or Website traffic. You can also create a campaign without a goal’s guidance. Then choose Search as the campaign type and select the conversion goals the campaign should optimize for (Google Ads Help).

Make sure the goal you select contains the primary action from Step 1. If the wrong goal is attached, the campaign optimizes toward the wrong thing.

Step 3: Are your network settings what you intended?

The Networks section has two checkboxes (Google Ads Help):

Setting	What it does	Default
Include Google search partners	Shows ads on sites that partner with Google Search	On (Google Ads Help)
Include Google Display Network (Display Expansion)	Uses unspent Search budget to show ads on the Display Network (Google Ads Help)	Check it in your own account

Decide on purpose. If you want a pure Google Search test, uncheck both so your results are easy to read. Note that Google Ads doesn’t show you the specific partner sites where Search ads ran, except for Performance Max (Google Ads Help).

Step 4: Is location targeting set to “Presence” or “Presence or interest”?

This setting is easy to miss because it sits under location options. There are two choices (Google Ads Help):

Option	Who can see your ads
Presence or interest (default, recommended by Google)	People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations
Presence	People in or regularly in your targeted locations

If you serve only local customers, such as a plumber or a clinic, think about whether “interest” brings clicks from people who can’t buy. If you sell to people planning to visit an area, such as hotels or tours, the default may fit better.

Exclusions use presence by default: they exclude people likely to be located in the excluded places (Google Ads Help).

Step 5: Languages and audience segments

Enter the languages your customers use (Google Ads Help). Match them to the language of your ads and landing page.

Audience segments are optional at this stage. You can add them to targeting based on demographics, interests, online activity, and remarketing (Google Ads Help).

Step 6: Budget and bidding

Budget. You set an average daily budget, the amount you’re “roughly comfortable spending each day over the course of the month” (Google Ads Help). On a given day the campaign might spend up to twice that amount. Over a month, you won’t be charged more than 30.4 times your average daily budget (Google Ads Help). Plan your budget with that in mind. We don’t suggest amounts here because they depend on your market.

Bidding. Google groups bid strategies by what you want (Google Ads Help):

Your focus	Strategies
Conversions	Maximize conversions, Target CPA
Conversion value	Maximize conversion value, Target ROAS
Clicks	Maximize clicks, Target CPC, Manual CPC
Visibility	Target impression share

Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions, and Maximize conversion value are Smart Bidding strategies. They need conversion tracking turned on (Google Ads Help).

Google also recommends “meeting certain conversion baselines” and measuring results over periods with at least 30 conversions, or 50 for Target ROAS (Google Ads Help). If your account has no conversion history, keep this in mind when judging early results. Google describes Maximize clicks as an option for new campaigns without enough conversion data for Target CPA or Target ROAS, or when traffic is the main goal (Google Ads Help).

Step 7: Ad groups and keywords

Ad groups. Keep each ad group to one theme. One set of closely related keywords, one set of ads that speak to them, and one landing page. If an ad can’t honestly answer every keyword in its group, split the group.

Match types. Google defines them like this (Google Ads Help):

Match type	How you write it	When ads may show
Broad	`running shoes`	Searches “related to your keyword,” which can include searches that don’t contain its direct meaning
Phrase	`"running shoes"`	Searches that “include the meaning of your keyword”
Exact	`[running shoes]`	Searches with “the same meaning or same intent as the keyword”

Google recommends using broad match together with Smart Bidding (Google Ads Help). If you start on Manual CPC or Maximize clicks, phrase and exact give you tighter control while you learn which searches convert.

Step 8: Negative keywords

Negative keywords stop your ads from showing on searches you don’t want. Add a starting list before launch, such as “free,” “jobs,” or competitor names if you don’t want those searches. Pick terms that fit your business, not a generic list.

Know how they behave (Google Ads Help):

Negative broad (the default) blocks searches that contain all your negative terms, in any order.
Negative phrase blocks searches that contain the terms in the same order.
Negative exact blocks only that exact search with no extra words.
Negative keywords don’t match close variants. Add plurals and misspellings yourself.

Step 9: Responsive search ads

Responsive search ads are the standard text ad for Search. The limits (Google Ads Help):

Element	Limit
Headlines	Minimum 3, up to 15, each up to 30 characters
Descriptions	Minimum 2, up to 4, each up to 90 characters
Display path fields	Up to 15 characters each

Google picks combinations to show. The second and third headline and the second description “aren’t guaranteed to appear” (Google Ads Help). So every headline must make sense on its own.

If a line must appear in every ad, such as a legal disclaimer, pin it to Headline position 1, Headline position 2, or Description position 1 (Google Ads Help). Pin only what you must. Pinning limits the combinations Google can test.

Step 10: Assets

Assets add extra lines and links under your ad. Set up at least these three:

Asset	Key limits from Google
Sitelinks	Link text up to 25 characters (12 in double-width languages). Up to 6 show on desktop and up to 8 on mobile. Google recommends at least 6 sitelinks with descriptions (Google Ads Help)
Callouts	Up to 25 characters (12 in double-width languages). Up to 10 can show (Google Ads Help)
Structured snippets	A header from Google’s list (such as Brands, Service catalog, Types) plus at least 3 values (Google Ads Help)

Sitelinks and callouts can be added at account, campaign, or ad group level. Put general facts at account level and specific ones lower down (Google Ads Help). Calls, prices, promotions, images, and lead forms are also available if they fit (Google Ads Help).

Step 11: Landing page

Landing page experience is part of Quality Score. Google describes it as “how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad” (Google Ads Help).

Google’s tips (Google Ads Help):

Mirror the call to action in your ad. If the ad says “book a free tour,” show the booking form.
Put the important information near the top of the page.
Make the page mobile friendly and fast.

Click every final URL yourself before launch. Check that it loads, the form works, and the test conversion fires.

What can go wrong?

Conversion action set to Secondary. Smart Bidding then has nothing to optimize toward.
Networks left on by accident. Search partner or Display traffic mixes into a test you meant to keep on Google Search.
“Presence or interest” for a local-only business. You may pay for clicks from people outside your service area.
Broad match without negatives or conversion data. Ads can show on loosely related searches.
Headlines that only work in order. Google mixes them, so “Call Today” after “Read Our Reviews” may not make sense.
Judging too early. Google advises measuring over periods with enough conversions (Google Ads Help).

What should you check in the first week?

The search terms report is your main tool. It shows the actual searches that triggered your ads and how they performed (Google Ads Help). Open it from Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms.

Read the search terms every day or two at first.
Add irrelevant terms as negative keywords.
Add good, converting terms as keywords if they’re not already in your list.
Check the “Match type” column to see which match types bring the useful searches (Google Ads Help).
Confirm conversions are recording. If clicks come in but conversions stay at zero, test the tag again.
Check ad and asset status for disapprovals.