TL;DR: In a brand-new Google Ads account with zero conversion history, Maximize Conversions has nothing to optimize toward. Creekside Marketing starts every new account with Maximize Clicks and phrase or exact match only, switching after the account accumulates 20 to 30 conversions. This approach cuts learning-phase waste by giving Google real intent signals before handing over bidding control.

Google Recommends Maximize Conversions. Here Is Why We Start Every New Account With Maximize Clicks Instead.

New Google Ads accounts fail at a predictable rate for a predictable reason. It is rarely the keywords. It is rarely the landing page. In most cases, it is the campaign settings, specifically the combination of default options Google presents during setup and the platform built-in incentives to expand your spend as quickly as possible.

This post is based on a video Peterson published on the Creekside Marketing YouTube channel: How To Set Up Campaign Settings Correctly For A New Google Ads Campaign. The video walks through a live campaign build, explaining the reasoning behind each decision. What follows is the full framework with the counterintuitive parts explained clearly.

Based on managing $20M+ in ad spend, the Creekside team reviews patterns across hundreds of accounts. The finding is consistent: Google defaults and “Recommended” labels are calibrated for Google revenue, not your ROI. In a new account with no conversion history, following those recommendations will cost you real money before you collect a single useful data point.

Why You Should Start With Maximize Clicks, Not Maximize Conversions

Maximize Clicks is the correct bidding strategy for a new account with no conversion history because Google Maximize Conversions algorithm requires past conversions to function. Without conversion data on record, the algorithm cannot optimize toward a goal it has never observed. Giving Google conversion-based bidding control with no signal results in unpredictable CPCs and spend behavior that does not correlate with actual intent.

Most advertisers choose Maximize Conversions on day one because Google positions it as the smart option. The logic sounds reasonable: tell Google to maximize conversions, Google finds people who will convert. That logic holds when Google already knows what a conversion looks like in your account. On day one in a fresh account, it does not know. Starting with Maximize Clicks gives the campaign a stable, controlled way to generate traffic while the account collects the conversion data the algorithm will eventually need.

During the Maximize Clicks phase, two rules are not optional:

Phrase match and exact match only. No broad match. While Google is not bidding based on conversion signals, it will simply optimize for clicks. With loose match types, you collect high volumes of low-intent queries, pay for irrelevant traffic, and accumulate conversion data that reflects the wrong searches. Phrase and exact match keep your traffic high-intent even when your bidding strategy cannot.

Switch to Maximize Conversions after 20 to 30 conversions, measured at the account level. Not the campaign level. If you have an existing account with prior conversion history, this threshold may already be met before the new campaign launches. In a fresh account, you need to accumulate that data first. At roughly 20 conversions, Maximize Conversions has enough signal to operate. Above 30, the results are reliably better.

What “Recommended” Usually Signals in a New Google Ads Account

When Google displays “Recommended” during campaign setup, you should stop and evaluate it carefully before accepting. Google recommendations are not disinterested guidance. The platform generates revenue when you spend, and the “Recommended” label appears most aggressively on settings that expand your reach, relax your targeting, and increase your budget velocity. That includes enabling the Display Network inside a search campaign, activating Search Partners from day one, and allowing broad match before you have any data to guide it.

Google reps who reach out proactively operate under similar pressures. Many earn commission tied to adoption of new features and higher spend thresholds. Some of those products have not been tested enough in production accounts to deliver reliable results across industries. That does not mean all guidance from Google is wrong. It does mean every recommendation should be evaluated against your actual account data, not accepted as default.

For a new search campaign, disable Search Partners and disable the Display Network. Search Partners dilute your early data by mixing in traffic from partner sites that often have different intent profiles than Google Search. The Display Network does not belong inside a search campaign under almost any circumstances. If you want display traffic, run a dedicated Demand Gen or Performance Max campaign with its own budget, creative assets, and independent performance signals.

Location Targeting: The Setting That Routes Ads to the Wrong Country

Selecting Presence is the only correct location targeting option for most accounts. Google offers two settings during setup: Presence (people physically in your targeted location) and Presence or interest (people in your location or researching it from anywhere in the world). The second option regularly causes local ads to serve impressions and clicks to users in entirely different countries who happened to search for your city from abroad.

This is not a theoretical edge case. It shows up regularly in audits: a local service business advertising to a specific market has clicks and spend attributed to users located thousands of miles away. Every dollar spent on that traffic is wasted. The fix is two clicks. Select Presence and do not change it.

For local service businesses, the recommended targeting radius is 10 miles. In sparsely populated areas where 10 miles does not cover enough potential customers, expanding to 15 or 20 miles is reasonable. The underlying logic is direct: people closer to a local business have higher conversion intent because proximity correlates with trust and practicality. As you expand the radius, that conversion signal weakens. With a limited budget in a competitive market, tight radius targeting gives you the highest chance of spending where the highest-intent customers are.

Google Ads advanced location search also lets you target by county or zip code and build exclusions within your target area. If specific zones are generating clicks but not conversions later in the campaign, you can exclude them from inside your location settings without adjusting your overall radius.

For a detailed walkthrough of location targeting options and common configuration errors, see our Google Ads location targeting guide.

Automatically Created Assets: Turn Them Off Before You Launch

Automatically created assets should be turned off for new campaigns because the feature lets Google generate ad headlines and descriptions by scraping your website, with results that range from generic to actively damaging. The risk is specific. If your website includes a blog post that compares your service against a competitor and describes that competitor as unreliable, Google asset automation may extract “unreliable [service category] near me” as a candidate headline. That headline can then appear in front of prospective customers searching for your service.

You cannot catch this without manually auditing your auto-generated assets, and most accounts do not. Turning auto-created assets off from the start means every headline and description in your account was approved by you before a single impression ran. The setup cost is a few additional minutes. The protection is complete ownership of your brand messaging.

Audience Segments: Add Them in Observation Mode, Not Targeting Mode

Adding audience segments to every new campaign in Observation mode is the right configuration because Targeting mode narrows your reach to only users who match those segments before you have any data about which audiences actually convert. Observation collects data on how different audience types interact with your ads without restricting your reach at all.

Start with website visitors as your first audience segment. Beyond that, add up to 20 segments covering demographics and interest categories that are plausible for your business, including ones you are uncertain about. If married couples convert at a different rate than single users for your service, you want that data. You will not have it without adding the segment. Observation mode makes this costless in terms of reach.

For a complete breakdown of how observation and targeting modes work and when to shift from one to the other, see our Google Ads audience segments guide.

Ad Scheduling: Only Pay for Clicks You Can Act On

For campaigns with a phone call goal, running ads around the clock is not a coverage strategy. It is a budget problem. Calls that come in after business hours have no one to answer them. Missed calls almost never convert, even with a callback the next morning. Paying for clicks that generate voicemails is not a viable lead generation model.

Set your ad schedule to match your actual business hours. If your team answers phones from 8 AM to 6 PM, your ads should run from 8 AM to 6 PM. Every dollar spent outside that window on a call-focused campaign is spent on leads you cannot close.

For form submission goals, the same urgency applies in a different form. Based on Creekside experience managing lead generation campaigns, responding to a form submission within five minutes makes you 80% more likely to close that lead. The window matters. If your budget is limited, combining tight ad scheduling with a fast follow-up process is one of the highest-leverage moves available in a new account.

Brand and Competitor Exclusions: Add Both at Launch

Excluding your own brand terms from new campaigns before going live prevents non-brand campaigns from bidding against your organic search listings. Non-brand search campaigns serve users who do not know your brand yet. Bidding on your own brand name in that campaign inflates your CPCs, competes with organic results you would have captured anyway, and spends budget on users who were already going to find you. Set up a separate dedicated brand campaign if you want to protect branded traffic.

Excluding competitor brand terms at launch is equally important. Clicks on competitor terms tend to be expensive because the user has already formed a preference. Many of those clicks are accidental or exploratory, not conversion-ready. The conversion rate on competitive keywords is lower and the CPC is higher. If you have a larger budget and a specific rationale for pursuing competitor traffic, run it in a separate campaign with its own budget and creative strategy, not mixed into your primary data-collection campaign.

Competitor exclusions belong in two places: the Brand restrictions section in campaign settings and in your negative keyword list.

Conversion Tracking Is the Foundation Everything Else Runs On

Before any of the above campaign settings matter, conversion tracking has to work correctly. Google Ads campaign settings, bidding strategies, and optimization all operate on conversion data as input. Without it, you are spending money that generates no actionable output.

Set up conversion tracking via Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, or native Google Ads conversion tags before the campaign goes live. Verify that conversion tags are firing on the correct thank-you pages, call confirmation events, or other actions that represent real business value.

For a detailed walkthrough of conversion tracking setup and the four settings that most commonly cause smart bidding to optimize in the wrong direction, see our Google Ads conversion tracking guide.

The New Account Campaign Settings Checklist

Before launching any new Google Ads search campaign, confirm each of these settings is correct:

Campaign type: Search, created without guidance
Conversion goals: Set up and verified as firing correctly
Bidding strategy: Maximize Clicks, switching to Maximize Conversions after 20 to 30 account-level conversions
Match types: Phrase match and exact match only during the Maximize Clicks phase
Networks: Display Network off, Search Partners off
Location targeting: Presence only, 10 to 20 mile radius for local service businesses
Automatically created assets: Off
Audience segments: Added in Observation mode, up to 20 segments
Ad schedule: Aligned to business hours if phone calls are the primary conversion goal
Brand exclusions: Own brand excluded from non-brand campaigns
Competitor exclusions: Competitor brand terms excluded in campaign settings and in negative keywords

Every one of these settings has a specific reason behind it. If you are inheriting an account, audit each setting during the first week. Most underperforming accounts have at least three of these configured incorrectly, and most of those errors were introduced during the original setup when Google recommended options were accepted without scrutiny.

Ready to Run Google Ads That Collect Clean Data From Day One?

Getting campaign settings right is the first step. Getting from clean data to consistent conversions requires ongoing optimization, match type management, audience analysis, and an understanding of how Google algorithm responds to the signals you give it.

If you want a second opinion on a new account or an existing one that is underperforming, our $10K Profit Audit is designed to find the specific settings and structural decisions that are costing you money, and to show you exactly what to change.

Learn about our Google Ads management services

About Peterson Rainey

Peterson Rainey is the founder of Creekside Marketing, a paid advertising agency that manages $20M+ in Google Ads and Meta Ads spend annually. Creekside works directly with local service businesses, healthcare practices, and e-commerce brands on paid search and paid social strategy. Peterson Google Ads setup and optimization frameworks are trained on real account performance across hundreds of clients and industries.