After trying to figure out why one person’s “best practices” backfired for someone else, it occurred to me what our problem was—we couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

To solve this problem, we started accumulating data. We collected data on our own accounts. We audited over 2,000 Google Ads accounts for potential clients.

And, amongst all that data, we made some remarkable discoveries.

Over the years since we first published these findings (March 1, 2016), we’ve audited thousands of new accounts. To be honest, very little has changed. Most accounts still struggle with these same problems and the findings in this article remain as useful today as they were when they were first published.