Less than most people do. The weekly job is reading the right numbers on a settled window and making at most one change — not optimising something every time you log in.

On this page

• What numbers should I read on Shopping every week?
• What weekly Shopping checks are not about numbers?
• How many changes should I make to Shopping each week?
• What should I avoid doing to a Shopping campaign weekly?

What numbers should I read on Shopping every week?

1. Check the window is settled. Never read days younger than 4. Measured on an apparel account against a saved snapshot: windows ending 4 or more days ago backfilled 0.0%; a window ending 1 day ago backfilled +83.7%, moving cost per acquisition from $80.11 to $43.60 with nothing changing.

2. Check for month-boundary distortion. Google caps monthly spend at daily budget × 30.4 and throttles near it. On an apparel account, July: $7,935 against an $8,056 ceiling, 98.5% consumed, delivery cut to $212 and $132 on the last two days, resuming at $303/day. Windows spanning the 1st are unreliable in both directions.

3. Read purchases by conversion time on the purchase action only — not the aggregate conversions column, which on a typical store rolls in page views, add-to-cart, begin-checkout, view-item, search and local actions. One store's raw column read about 42 for a week where real purchases were 5.

4. Budget utilisation per campaign, read at budget-group level if budgets are shared.

5. Impression share lost to rank versus budget. That split, not cost per click, tells you which problem you have.

What weekly Shopping checks are not about numbers?

• Disapprovals and feed status. A silently disapproved bestseller is the most expensive thing that can happen quietly.
• Is a promo live, and does it reach the feed? A cart-level automatic discount never reaches the feed, so Shopping quotes full price while the site is on sale.
• Did anyone else change the account? Pull change history grouped by user and client type. On one

12-account book, 1,141 of 1,148 events over 29 days were mine — the other 7 were scheduled scripts on client seats, including a budget cut that silently reversed one of my own changes.

How many changes should I make to Shopping each week?

One change, one read date, written down before you start. Stack two changes in a week and you have no read on either.

Budget moves in roughly 15% steps gated on cost per acquisition. Exemptions: killing a zero-conversion campaign, cutting an unused ceiling, and dropping a target floor — all fine in one move.

What should I avoid doing to a Shopping campaign weekly?

Do not negate on one window. A term reading $224 and 0 conversions at 30 days read $894 and 9 conversions at 90 days. Validate across several windows spanning about a year, and reconcile against existing shared lists first.

Do not tune a bidder that cannot see your goal. A supplements brand ran ten weeks of ad pauses, budget cuts and target changes and moved new-customer CAC from $158 to $170. Check what the bidder can actually see before spending weeks adjusting it.

Do not rebuild what is working. Default to leaving it alone. Hygiene is not a scaling lever.

Related questions

Why does my Google Ads ROAS swing so much from week to week?

Before assuming the account is unstable, check whether the measuring instrument changed underneath the series. Every published answer says "wait for more data" or "widen the window." None raise the possibility that the ruler moved. Read the full answer.

How do I know if my Google Ads agency is actually doing anything, or just letting the account run?

Pull the change history and group it by user. It shows every change, who made it, and when — and it is the one thing in the account that cannot be dressed up in a report. Read the full answer.

Does a feed-only Performance Max campaign really only run on Shopping?

No. A feed-only campaign is weighted toward Shopping inventory, but it still serves across the Performance Max network — Google generates assets from your product data to fill the other placements. Read the full answer.

Written by Usama Khan, who runs Google Ads for e-commerce brands and home-services companies at AdventurAds. Figures are from accounts under active management and are anonymised. Last reviewed 2026-08-26.