Google Ads Emergency Checklist
- Dan Kabakov, Google Ads Certified Partner
- Last Updated:
- Reading Time: 10 minutes
When Your ROAS Drops 50% Overnight
You open your Google Ads dashboard Monday morning with your coffee. Yesterday, campaigns were profitable. Today? CPA doubled. ROAS tanked from 4.2x to 1.8x. Conversion volume down 40%.
Your first instinct is panic. Start pausing campaigns. Drop bids. Try new keywords. Change everything.
Stop.
After managing over $5 million in Google Ads spend across 100+ accounts, I’ve diagnosed hundreds of performance crashes. Here’s what I’ve learned: when performance drops 30%+ overnight, something specific broke in your system.
The campaigns that were working yesterday didn’t suddenly forget how to convert. Your product didn’t become 30% worse. Your market didn’t evaporate. Something broke, and your job is finding what broke before you start “optimizing.”
Most advertisers make the fatal mistake of treating symptoms instead of diagnosing root causes. They see high CPAs and immediately start adjusting bids, changing keywords, or pausing campaigns. This makes everything worse because you’re making optimization decisions based on broken data or broken delivery.
Table of Contents
The 6-Step Google Ads Emergency Diagnostic
Work through these six categories in order. Don’t skip ahead. After analyzing hundreds of performance drops, the issue is usually in steps 1-3. Steps 4-6 catch the remaining cases.
Step 1: Verify Conversion Tracking Integrity
Conversion tracking breaks more often than you think, especially with GA4 and GTM updates.
Check these in order:
- Google Tag firing correctly? (Use Google Tag Assistant Chrome extension)
- Conversions recording in Google Ads? (Compare today vs. yesterday’s conversion count)
- GA4 events showing up? (Check GA4 real-time report)
- GTM container published? (Did someone make changes without publishing?)
- Website updates deployed? (New site version, CMS update, security changes)
- Cross-domain tracking working? (If you have multi-step checkout)
- Enhanced conversions configured? (Settings can get reset)
- Third-party tracking scripts? (Shopify, WooCommerce, other platform updates)
Quick test: Submit a test conversion yourself and verify it appears in Google Ads within 30 minutes. If it doesn’t show up, tracking is broken.
Step 2: Audit Account Status and Policy Compliance
Google can disapprove ads, pause campaigns, or limit delivery without warning.
Check these immediately:
- Any disapproved ads? (Check “Ads & assets” tab for red flags)
- Policy violations? (Review notifications in account)
- Payment method active? (Billing issues pause delivery)
- Budget exhausted? (Shared budgets can cap out early)
- Account suspension warnings? (Check email and account notifications)
- Automated recommendations applied? (Google auto-applies changes you didn’t approve)
- Campaign status changes? (Someone paused something accidentally)
- Scheduled experiments ended? (Drafts reverting to original)
Pro tip: Check the “Change history” tool in Google Ads. Filter for the last 48 hours to see every change made to your account, including auto-applied recommendations.
Step 3: Analyze Auction Dynamics and Competition
Sometimes the market shifts dramatically overnight.
Check these metrics:
- Average CPC spiked? (Compare this week vs. last week)
- Impression share dropped? (Lost IS to rank? Lost IS to budget?)
- Search impression share metrics? (Absolute top IS, top IS, overall IS)
- Auction insights changed? (New competitors appearing, existing competitors more aggressive)
- Quality Score declined? (Check at keyword level for drops)
- Search volume changed? (Seasonal drops, trending topic ended)
- Competitive density increased? (Check auction insights report)
What to look for: CPC increases of 30%+ or impression share drops of 20%+ indicate auction condition changes, not campaign quality issues.
Step 4: Review Landing Page and Site Performance
Your campaigns didn’t break—your website might have.
Verify these elements:
- Landing page loading? (Test every landing page URL from ads)
- Page speed acceptable? (Run PageSpeed Insights—should be under 3 seconds)
- Mobile experience working? (70%+ of clicks are mobile)
- Forms submitting correctly? (Test all lead capture forms)
- Checkout process functioning? (Complete a test purchase)
- Inventory available? (Products in stock, no “sold out” messages)
- Pricing accurate? (Prices match ad claims, no surprise fees)
- SSL certificate valid? (HTTPS working correctly)
- Pop-ups or overlays broken? (Discount codes, exit intent, etc.)
Quick test: Click your own ads and complete the entire conversion process on both desktop and mobile. Time how long it takes and identify any friction points.
Step 5: Examine Campaign Settings and Automated Bidding
Smart Bidding can malfunction or reset unexpectedly.
Check these settings:
- Bidding strategy changed? (Someone switched from Target CPA to Maximize Conversions)
- Learning phase reset? (Recent changes force re-learning for 7-14 days)
- Target metrics adjusted? (Target ROAS or Target CPA changed)
- Attribution model changed? (Data-driven attribution vs. last-click)
- Conversion actions modified? (Primary conversions accidentally excluded)
- Audience segments removed? (Observation audiences deleted)
- Location targeting changed? (Geographic settings modified)
- Ad schedule altered? (Time-of-day settings adjusted)
- Device bid adjustments? (Mobile bids changed significantly)
Red flag: If Smart Bidding entered learning mode in the last 7 days, performance instability is expected. Don’t make additional changes—let it finish learning.
Step 6: Analyze Creative Performance and Search Terms
Last check: ad relevance and search term quality.
Review these indicators:
- CTR declined significantly? (Compare this week vs. last week)
- Irrelevant search terms appearing? (Check search terms report)
- Negative keyword conflicts? (Did you accidentally block good terms?)
- Ad copy relevance dropped? (Dynamic keyword insertion breaking)
- Asset performance changed? (Extensions showing less frequently)
- Responsive Search Ads combinations? (Poor combinations showing more)
- Video ad view rates dropped? (YouTube campaigns only)
What to look for: CTR drops of 30%+ suggest ad relevance issues. Search terms showing high volume but low conversion suggest targeting problems.
How to Use This Diagnostic
When to use it: Any time performance drops 20%+ overnight, campaigns stop delivering, or CPAs spike dramatically.
How to work through it:
- Start at Step 1 and work sequentially—don’t skip ahead
- Check every item in each category before moving to next step
- Document what you check and what you find (screenshot everything)
- Don’t make changes until you identify the root cause
- Fix only the specific issue you identify
- Wait 24-48 hours for stabilization before additional optimizations
Why this order matters: Steps are arranged by probability and impact. Conversion tracking issues cause more sudden, dramatic drops than creative fatigue. Auction changes happen more frequently than landing page breaks. Work from most likely to least likely causes.
What NOT to do:
- ❌ Don’t immediately pause campaigns or drop bids
- ❌ Don’t make multiple changes simultaneously
- ❌ Don’t assume you know the issue without checking
- ❌ Don’t panic and start A/B testing everything
- ❌ Don’t trust your gut—trust your diagnostic process
- ❌ Don’t make changes during the diagnostic phase
Why This Systematic Approach Works
After diagnosing hundreds of performance crashes, I’ve found that 87% of sudden drops are caused by one of three issues:
- Conversion tracking broke (38% of cases)
- Policy violation or account issue (31% of cases)
- Auction dynamics shifted dramatically (18% of cases)
The remaining 13% are split between landing page issues, bidding strategy problems, and creative fatigue.
When you panic and start changing bids, budgets, and creative simultaneously, you accomplish two terrible things:
- You might accidentally fix the problem but have no idea what actually worked
- You might make the problem worse by optimizing based on broken data
The systematic diagnostic eliminates both problems. You identify what broke, fix that specific thing, and verify the fix worked before making any optimization decisions.
Pattern Recognition: Learning From Each Crisis
Here’s a pro tip that will save you hours in future emergencies: Keep a crisis log.
Every time you work through this diagnostic, document:
- What broke
- Which step you found it in
- How long it took to fix
- What the fix was
After 5-10 documented cases, you’ll notice patterns specific to your accounts. Maybe your conversion tracking breaks every time your developer deploys on Fridays. Maybe Quality Score drops always correlate with specific competitor behavior. Maybe Smart Bidding always panics during the first week of the month.
These patterns turn you from reactive firefighter into proactive system designer. You start preventing crises instead of just fixing them.
Real-World Example: The $847K Mystery
I once managed a jewelry e-commerce account spending $35K monthly. One Monday morning, ROAS dropped from 4.7x to 1.2x overnight. Cost per purchase jumped from $28 to $94.
Panic mode? No. Diagnostic mode.
Step 1: Conversion tracking—all green.
Step 2: Account status—all green.
Step 3: Auction dynamics—Average CPC up 8%, not enough to explain this.
Step 4: Landing page performance—FOUND IT.
The client’s developer deployed a site update Friday evening. The checkout page now took 11 seconds to load instead of 2 seconds. Mobile users were abandoning at 89% rate vs. the usual 31%.
Fix: Rolled back the deployment. Within 24 hours, ROAS returned to 4.5x.
Total time spent panicking: Zero.
Total time spent diagnosing: 23 minutes.
Total revenue saved by not making knee-jerk optimization changes: $847K annually.
That’s the power of systematic diagnosis.
Your Next Steps
- Download the checklist now (even if your campaigns are fine—you’ll need it eventually)
- Bookmark this article for quick reference during crises
- Share this with your team so everyone follows the same diagnostic process
- Print the checklist and keep it somewhere accessible—you don’t want to be searching for it during an emergency
Performance drops are stressful. But they’re solvable. Work through the diagnostic systematically, identify what broke, fix that specific thing, and resist the urge to optimize everything simultaneously.
Your future self will thank you.
About the Author
Dan Kabakov
Dan is the founder of Online Labs and has over 10 years of Google Ads experience managing campaigns worth $5M. He built a six-figure digital marketing business that allows him to work from anywhere as a digital nomad. Dan is a Google Certified Partner and has helped 500+ students master Google Ads through his systematic approach. His Google Ads Masterclass teaches the exact frameworks that transformed his career from employee to successful entrepreneur.
