# Your salon ads used to work and now they don't

> The ads still run, the budget still goes out, and the enquiries have stopped. Here is the order to check things in, starting with what Google changed.

Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/blog/your-salon-ads-used-to-work-and-now-they-dont/  
Author: The Salon Ads Studio  
Published: 2026-09-22

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If the ads are still running and the enquiries have dried up, four things can have changed, and only one of them is you.

Google can have changed your campaign for you. The auction can have got dearer, so the same money buys fewer clicks. The searches people type can have moved. Or the enquiries are still arriving and something at your end is dropping them.

Check them in that order. The first one is free to check, takes five minutes, and is the one nobody thinks of, because nothing changed at your end.

## First work out which number actually fell

Three numbers, in this order: how many times your ad was shown, how many people clicked it, and how many rang or filled something in. Write down the last four weeks and the four weeks before, or this month against the same month last year.

Where the fall is tells you which check to do first.

- Shown fewer times: Google is putting you in front of fewer people. Checks one and two.
- Shown the same, fewer clicks: you are still in the auction but lower down, or up against ads that read better. Check two.
- Clicks the same, fewer enquiries: nothing about the ads has changed. Check four.

![Which of three salon Google Ads numbers fell, and which check each one points to](/images/blog/salon-ads-used-to-work-which-number.svg "The numbers are blank because they are yours. It is the shape of the drop, not its size, that says where to look first.")

If the ads have stopped showing altogether rather than slowed down, that is a different problem with different causes, and it has its own piece: [why your salon ads are not showing at all](/blog/why-your-salon-ads-are-not-showing-at-all).

## Check one: has your account been changed for you

This is the one to do first this autumn, because it has been happening all month.

Google said in April, and confirmed again in June, that campaigns using automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting "will continue to be auto-upgraded starting in September 2026" into a set of features it calls AI Max. It expects all the upgrades for eligible campaigns "to conclude by the end of September". Dynamic Search Ads, an older feature, were pushed back to February 2027.

The upgrade is meant to leave things as they were. Google says the settings are set to mirror the old ones: a campaign that used automatically created assets comes out with search term matching and text customisation switched on, and a campaign that used the campaign-level broad match setting comes out with search term matching switched on.

![The two September 2026 upgrade paths for a salon Google Ads campaign and what each one switched on](/images/blog/salon-ads-used-to-work-upgrade.svg "Both paths end with search term matching on, which is the setting that decides who sees you.")

Search term matching is the part worth understanding. In Google's own description it uses broad match and what it calls keywordless technology to find searches beyond the keywords you listed. Your ads can now appear on searches that are not on your keyword list, which is exactly what check three is for.

To see whether anything was changed and when, open Change history in the Campaigns menu. It lists changes to your account, campaigns and ad groups for the past two years, lays them over your impressions, clicks and cost on a timeline, and shows who made each one. Changes made by automated systems can appear under a user such as "Google Ads system". Most changes made in the last 30 days can be undone from the same page.

Two honest limits on that log. Google says data older than two years is not available, and that "sometimes, not all account-level settings changes or changes made by Google representatives during consultations are listed". It is a good place to start, not proof that nothing happened.

If the upgrade did land and you want less of it, the parts come off separately: search term matching in the ad group settings, text customisation and final URL expansion in the campaign settings.

## Check two: is the money running out before the day does

In your Google Ads account, the columns picker has a group called Competitive metrics. Switch on three of them.

- Search impression share: the number of times you were shown, divided by the number of times Google reckons you could have been shown.
- Search lost IS (budget): the share of the time your ads did not show because the budget was not enough. Google offers this one for a whole campaign only, not per ad group.
- Search lost IS (rank): the share of the time they did not show because your Ad Rank was too low.

Now compare this month with a month when the phone was ringing. If the budget one has grown, your day is finishing earlier than it used to and the same money is gone before the afternoon. If the rank one has grown, you are being outbid or your ad has drifted away from what people are typing, and more money is not the first answer.

One catch before you read too much into it. Google notes that the rank figure is not shown on the ad groups tab at all if you ran out of budget at any point in the dates you are looking at, and that these figures take a day or two to update. So do not judge yesterday.

Google also says plainly that its new AI Max features will not be effective if a campaign is limited by budget. That is a sentence worth reading twice if your campaign was upgraded this month and your budget is a few pounds a day.

![A stylist mixing colour at the back bar, the kind of booking a salon Google Ads campaign should be bringing in](/images/blog/salon-ads-used-to-work-hero-03.jpg)

## Check three: are they still the right searches

Open the search terms report. It lists what people actually typed before your ad appeared, and Google says that depending on your matching settings this list can be different from your keyword list.

This is where the money goes on a small account, and it goes quietly. Courses. Jobs. Apprenticeships. Free models. A cut in a town twenty miles away. If search term matching went on in your account this month, expect more of those rather than fewer. Every one of them can be added from that report as a negative keyword, so it never costs you again.

We block 536 of these searches before a client's first click, and the list is mostly courses, jobs, apprenticeships, free models, cheap, DIY and wholesale. You can build your own version by reading the report once a week for a month.

![The salon phone back in its cradle beside an open appointment book, where salon Google Ads enquiries get lost](/images/blog/salon-ads-used-to-work-hero-05.jpg)

## Check four: the enquiries arrive and go nowhere

If the clicks held up and the calls did not, the ads did their job and something after the click did not.

Two things are usually behind it, and each has its own piece rather than a paragraph here: the page people land on, in [clicks but nobody rings](/blog/your-salon-ads-get-clicks-but-nobody-rings), and the phone nobody can reach mid colour, in [the bookings you lose when nobody can answer the phone](/blog/the-bookings-you-lose-when-nobody-can-answer-the-phone).

One thing worth saying out loud, because plenty of people will tell you otherwise: nobody can tell you which client came from which search. Fresha and Treatwell do not hand booking data back to Google, and we do not pretend they do. What can honestly be counted is calls, form enquiries and booking click-outs.

![A rain-streaked salon window at dusk with one client in the chair, the kind of quiet week no salon Google Ads setting explains](/images/blog/salon-ads-used-to-work-hero-07.jpg)

## If the account is clean, it may not be you

Sometimes all four checks come back fine and the book is still thin. That is a real answer rather than a failed search, and it is a different question: [why your salon bookings dropped this month](/blog/why-your-salon-bookings-dropped-this-month).

## What to do this week

1. Write the three numbers down, this month against a good month.
2. Open Change history and read the last 60 days.
3. Switch on the three impression share columns and compare the two months.
4. Read the search terms report and block everything that was never going to be a client.
5. Only then touch the budget.

That is about an hour, and it can be done in four sittings between clients. It is also roughly what we do on a salon's account every week, if you would rather not. The first thing we fix, your Google listing, is free before you pay us anything.

## Frequently asked questions

### How long should I give a change before deciding it made things worse?

Longer than a day. Google says its figures for how often your ads showed take a day or two to update, so one quiet Tuesday tells you nothing at all. If the question underneath is how long ads take to do anything in the first place, that has its own piece on this site.

### The lost-to-budget figure is high. Does that mean I am losing clients?

Not on its own. It says your ads stopped showing for some of the searches you were eligible for, not that those searches were worth having. Read the search terms report first. If most of what you missed was courses and jobs, a bigger budget just buys more of that.

### My ads are run by someone else. Can I see what they changed?

Yes, as long as they sign in with their own login rather than yours. Change history shows the email address of whoever made each change through the Google Ads interface, and changes made by automated systems show up under a name such as Google Ads system. Ask for your own admin access if you have not got it.

### Does this upgrade apply to a Smart campaign from my Business Profile?

Google's announcement is about Search campaigns using automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting. It does not name Smart campaigns, the free setup offered inside a Business Profile. If that is what you run, checks two, three and four still apply.

### Should I pause everything for a week to see what happens?

It is a slow way to learn something the reports will tell you this afternoon, and you give up the enquiries while you wait. If what you actually want to know is what happens to the phone when the ads stop, that is a separate piece on this site.