Feeling swamped by the sheer volume of PPC metrics in your Google Ads account? While information is power, too much can be paralyzing. It’s about cutting through the noise and zeroing in on the Google Ads metrics that truly illuminate your PPC performance. But which ones are the real MVPs, the ones that pack the biggest punch?

Nailing down your PPC fundamentals is like finding a treasure map to optimization. To uncover these core metrics, we consulted with seventeen paid search marketing experts, posing two key questions:

#1: If you could only monitor three Pay Per Click metrics in your PPC account, which three would you pick and why? In other words, which three give you the most comprehensive view of your performance? #2 (Bonus Question): What PPC metric do you find misleading, overhyped, or simply a waste of time?

Keep reading to discover the three PPC metrics these AdWords gurus deem indispensable for understanding campaign performance – and which ones they consider utterly useless.

Our expert panel features:

• Crystal Anderson
• Bethany Bey
• Geordie Carswell
• Jessica Cates
• Tom Demers
• Brad Geddes
• Joe Kerschbaum
• Larry Kim
• Aaron Levy
• Shawn Livengood
• Elizabeth Marsten
• Kate Morris
• Sara Rennich
• Dave Rosborough
• Chad Summerhill
• Matthew Umbro
• Joe Vivolo

Jump to the end to see the most popular answers. P.S. After you’re done here, check out these posts:

• Every PPC Metric Under the Sun (+How to Improve Each One)
• PPC Reporting Guide: How to Learn, Inform, & Impress with Your Data

Crystal Anderson

Every day, certain metrics stand out more than others in terms of performance, guiding our optimization strategies. If I had to pick just three, I’d go with CPA, CTR, and Conversion Rate. Why CPA? Every campaign needs a CPA (or ROAS) target to measure performance against. You can generate tons of conversions, but they need to be cost-effective and align with your profitability goals. Why CTR? While CPA reveals if conversions are profitable, CTR hints at the quality of your traffic. If performance is lagging, examining your CTR can tell you if your chosen keywords and ads are negatively impacting results. Why Conversion Rate? Conversion rate is another powerful metric for dissecting how well your keywords and ads are truly performing. A great CTR is fantastic, but if those clicks aren’t converting, your conversion rate will sound the alarm, signaling it’s time to optimize. Conversion rate also lets you track trends over time (not just absolute numbers), allowing you to compare against other advertising channels – a crucial step in understanding your campaigns’ effectiveness beyond just PPC. Which PPC metric do I find bogus/overrated/a waste of time? Impression Share. It has its place, but not in assessing campaign performance, especially against CPA/ROAS goals. A 90% impression share doesn’t guarantee success, nor does a 30% share signify failure. Impression share needs context and alignment with your specific goals to be truly meaningful. Crystal Anderson leads the 12-person paid search team at SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia-based search agency. Kicking off her PPC journey in 2006, she’s managed accounts across various platforms, internationally, and with monthly budgets ranging from four to six figures. You can catch her on Twitter at @CrystalA. Related: PPC Reporting Guide: How to Learn, Inform, and Impress with Your Data

Bethany Bey

CPL – Every client I collaborate with has a target CPL (cost per lead) in mind. You want to ensure that your PPC efforts are yielding more than what you invest. One hundred conversions sound great, but not if they cost $50 each and only bring in $5 each in revenue. Conversion Rate – This metric helps you assess the effectiveness of your landing pages. Lots of clicks but a dismal conversion rate? Time to revamp those landing pages! CTR – You might think you’ve crafted the most brilliant PPC ad ever, but if it doesn’t connect with users, it’s all for naught. CTR lets you gauge how effectively you’re communicating with potential customers. I couldn’t imagine optimizing PPC without it. Bonus question: Average Position – Don’t get me wrong, average position has its uses. However, I’ve seen too many advertisers fixate on snagging the #1 spot without considering the cost-benefit analysis. With a limited budget, appearing in positions 3-4 might be more strategic, driving traffic at an acceptable cost per click. Bethany Bey is an Account Executive at Hanapin Marketing. Connect with her on Twitter at @bethany_bey.

Geordie Carswell

For the accounts I manage, the most frequently monitored, bread-and-butter metrics are:

• Cost per conversion (Is this campaign/ad group/keyword profitable?)
• The new “Relative CTR” metric (How does my CTR compare to the competition?)
• Average CPC (Is Google slowly squeezing my ROI with gradually increasing click costs?) Personally, I find the numerical Quality Score metric “x/10” less relevant now than ever. It seems like you can achieve top ad positions, sitelink extensions, and other “advanced ad features” (previously reserved for advertisers with high Quality Scores) even with a 4/10 in many cases. Geordie Carswell is a renowned paid search expert and the author of PPCblog.com, a widely read Google Ads blog. You can find him on Twitter: @geordiecarswell.

Jessica Cates

CPA: If I’m not delivering a good CPA for my clients based on their objectives, I’m not doing my job effectively. It’s also crucial to understand the kind of ROI your conversions are generating, going beyond just the conversion itself. CTR: I rely on CTR analysis to pinpoint areas for improvement. It’s easy to get caught up in CTR, especially at the ad level. High-CTR ads are fantastic and can boost your Quality Scores, leading to lower CPCs. However, if those high-CTR ads aren’t driving the desired outcome (conversions), it’s time to rethink your ad copy. Impression share: I appreciate the entire suite of IS metrics (IS, Exact Match IS, Lost IS Budget, and Lost IS Rank) because they offer invaluable insights for optimization. Increasing your budget or bids could capture additional impressions and clicks, ultimately leading to more conversions. While aiming for a 100% impression share isn’t realistic or even desirable, it’s crucial to monitor these metrics. One paid search metric I take with a grain of salt is first-page bids: While it’s essential to review bids for keywords ranking below the first-page bid estimate, take Google Ads’ suggestions lightly. I’ve often seen ads with “estimated below the first page” bids ranking perfectly fine. Before blindly raising your bids to exorbitant amounts based on Google’s estimates, understand how first-page bid estimates work, especially in relation to exact match keywords. Jessica Cates is an Account Executive at Hanapin Marketing.

Tom Demers

My top three would be:

• Overall ROI – This is the most important number in any account – a snapshot of the return you’re getting for your advertising dollars. Comparing this metric to your profit margins and the performance of other advertising channels provides the ultimate evaluation of your PPC channel and overall account health.
• Profit Per Impression/Click – This often-overlooked metric reveals the profit generated by each click or impression within your pay-per-click accounts. It’s a more granular and versatile version of ROI, helping you determine the value of different campaign elements. What’s the profit per click of a keyword, ad variation, ad group, or campaign? These are the questions you want to be asking (and answering) at these granular levels (credit to Brad Geddes for first introducing me to this concept).
• Cost Per Conversion – Within the Google Ads interface, cost-per-conversion data is incredibly useful, especially for lead generation campaigns. While it’s not a perfect metric – particularly for businesses with multiple lead types or e-commerce products (it doesn’t factor in the true value of a conversion, lead, or sale) – I use it as a quick health check when evaluating account performance at a glance. Average position is arguably the most overblown stat – it can be helpful for quick issue diagnosis, but it’s often misleading. I’d argue it has the most significant negative impact on campaigns as advertisers get caught up in “bidding to position” at the expense of their overall ROI. Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a specialized search marketing agency offering SEM services including pay-per-click account management, SEO audits, content marketing services, and a variety of link building services such as guest post placement packages and blog strategy.

Brad Geddes

1. The most crucial PPC metric for evaluating any account is profit. Most accounts aim to boost a company’s revenue and profits, making it the primary metric for judging the success of your account, keywords, ad copy, placements, and landing pages. Of course, there are other reasons to run PPC campaigns, and you should assess success based on those specific goals. However, when in doubt, profit is always a reliable indicator. In fact, I even use Profit Per Impression as my success metric during testing.
2. I’m bending the rules for the second metric and choosing ad rank, a combination of Quality Score and bid. If your ad rank is too low, your ads won’t show, meaning no clicks or conversions. This makes metrics like CTR, conversion rates, and CPA secondary to ad rank.
3. The third metric I find invaluable is lost impression share. A low impression share due to budget constraints suggests you should either eliminate underperforming keywords or refine your geographic targeting to focus on areas with higher conversion potential. If your low impression share is due to ad rank, you’ll need to work on your bids or Quality Score. A quick account diagnosis using impression share can help you determine if your primary issue lies with bids, Quality Score, or budget. Brad Geddes is the founder of Certified Knowledge, a PPC training and toolset platform. He is the author of Advanced Google AdWords and an official Google Ads Seminar Leader. Follow @bgTheory on Twitter for the latest industry updates.

Joe Kerschbaum

While core KPIs vary from client to client, if I had to choose three universally important metrics for most accounts, I’d go with: click-through rate, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. These metrics provide the most comprehensive assessment of your success. Bonus round! I haven’t found much value in the view-through conversion metric in Google Ads. Joseph Kerschbaum is Vice President of Clix Marketing. His writing on the SEM industry has been featured in Website Magazine, Search Engine Watch, and other industry publications. Joseph is also co-author of the Wiley/Sybex book PPC Advertising: An Hour a Day.

Larry Kim

If I could only access three pay-per-click metrics, I’d choose Cost, Clicks, and Conversions (1-per click). Why? Cost reveals your spending, while clicks and conversions show what you got in return. Clicks alone aren’t that helpful, but when used to calculate ratios like cost per click, conversion rate, and cost per conversion, they become incredibly insightful. I consider Cost, Clicks, and Conversions as the fundamental building blocks from which all other PPC metrics are derived. Impressions are also valuable for determining click-through rate (a key component of Quality Score), but with a limit of three, they don’t make the cut. The most misleading PPC metric is arguably the minimum first page bid estimate. It’s just that – an estimate – and often inaccurate. I frequently see keywords generating significant clicks and impressions in top positions despite being below their estimated first-page bids. Larry Kim is the founder and chief technology officer at nexus-security.

Aaron Levy

A robust (and improving) CTR signals that your ad copy and keyword choices resonate with your target audience. If CTR plummets over a day, week, or month, it’s either time to revamp my ads or investigate potential external factors. A low CPA (cost per action) indicates that I’m targeting affordable and relevant keywords, generating a strong return for my client. Conversions are the ultimate proof of success, demonstrating that I’ve achieved the desired goal and potentially generated revenue for my client. While a low CPA and high CTR are fantastic, they’re meaningless without a healthy number of conversions. Bonus: I personally find the impressions metric a bit of a time-waster. For the vast majority of advertisers, PPC is about direct response. This response might be a click, form submission, or purchase, but it always represents user action. While spikes or dips in impressions can indicate external factors (product mentions on TV, controversial news, natural disasters), they’re insignificant unless they impact click volume, CTR, or conversions. Aaron Levy is a PPC associate at SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia-based search agency. Working in paid search since 2007, he manages clients across various industries with budgets of all sizes. Follow Aaron Levy on Twitter for insights on PPC strategy, homebrewing, lowbrow humor, and highbrow film recommendations.

Shawn Livengood

My three must-have PPC metrics would be Cost Per Acquisition, Conversions (1 per click), and CTR. Conversions are the name of the game in PPC, so tracking them is non-negotiable. Monitoring CPA ensures a good return on ad spend, while CTR helps diagnose issues with ad copy, match types, or negative keyword selection. Bonus question: I consider CPM (cost per thousand impressions) a bit of a vanity metric. While it’s relevant for brand-focused display campaigns aiming for maximum impressions, I’ve never encountered an account in my 3+ years of PPC management where this metric was truly critical. Shawn Livengood is the SEM Manager for BuildASign.com. He shares his PPC wisdom on his blog, PPC Without Pity.

Elizabeth Marsten

Must-haves:

• Cost
• CTR
• Clicks Overrated:
• Relative CTR
• View-Through Conversions
• Lost Impression Share Elizabeth Marsten is the Director of Search Marketing at Portent, Inc., an internet marketing company in Seattle, WA. She oversees the daily operations of PPC, SEO, Links, Copy, and Social at Portent while also managing her own PPC clients.

Kate Morris

Conversions, Cost Per Conversion, Quality Score – These three offer a more accurate picture of account performance because they’re rooted in relevance and the bottom line. Click-through rate can be fickle, and impressions and clicks, while important, can fluctuate and don’t always tell the whole story. Ultimately, you want your ads to deliver tangible results for your business. These conversions don’t have to be sales; they can be any action that benefits the company, whether it’s a sale or a new member joining your free community. And while some might disagree, I believe Quality Score is crucial because it reflects the relevance of your account elements to potential customers. Bonus Question: Cost per click. Who cares as long as your cost per conversion is on point! Kate Morris is an SEO Consultant at Distilled in Seattle. She’s a frequent speaker at conferences like PubCon, SearchLove, and MozCon, covering a wide range of topics.

Sara Rennich

If I were restricted to just three metrics for evaluating a PPC account, I’d choose Cost per Conversion, Click-Through Rate, and Clicks to gain the most complete understanding of performance. Achieving an advertiser’s cost-per-conversion goal is paramount to campaign success. When optimizing keywords or ads, I analyze each cost per conversion to determine its effectiveness. The same principle applies at the campaign level. CTR, while often dismissed as irrelevant for display campaigns, is critical for PPC. A higher CTR typically correlates with a higher Quality Score, leading to improved average position and lower CPCs. Additionally, CTR helps determine an ad’s relevance to user queries. Finally, low-CTR keywords can reveal potential negative keywords, allowing you to eliminate unwanted traffic from your campaigns. A comprehensive view of campaign success requires evaluating cost per conversion and CTR in conjunction with the campaign’s click metric. For example, a CTR might show unusual results like 100% or 50% – often due to keywords with only 1 or 2 clicks. In such cases, analyzing clicks alongside CTR provides context. Furthermore, evaluating clicks helps identify high-volume keywords that significantly impact campaign performance. Bonus: What PPC metric do you think is bogus/overrated/a waste of time? Monitoring a campaign’s average CPM offers little to no value or insight. It’s the least important metric when assessing campaign success. Sara Rennich is Technology and Analytics Manager at Fuor Digital.

Dave Rosborough

Favorite Pay-per-click Metrics:

1. CPL/CPA
   • Spend divided by conversions.
   • Most of my clients have specific CPL goals, making it easy to identify problematic campaigns/ad groups/keywords and enhance overall account efficiency.
   • The logic is straightforward: If your actual CPL exceeds your target CPL, there are issues within that campaign/ad group/keyword requiring attention. Conversely, an actual CPL lower than your target indicates the campaign/ad group/keyword is performing in line with client goals.
2. CTR
   • Clicks divided by impressions.
   • CTR is an excellent gauge of ad performance.
   • Again, the logic is clear: higher CTRs suggest your ad copy resonates with searchers (assuming sufficient click and impression data), while lower CTRs often indicate problems with ad copy, landing pages, or even account structure.
3. ROI
   • Net revenue divided by PPC spend, multiplied by 100 (to express as a percentage).
   • Arguably the most crucial metric for clients, ROI measures your campaign’s profitability.
   • Remember that conversions can have varying values. Calculating ROI ensures your PPC efforts are profitable, looking beyond potentially misleading CPLs. Bogus PPC Metric: Budget

• The amount allocated for daily campaign spending.
• I’m probably not alone in saying this, but campaign budgets can be deceptive. While they act as a safety net, actual spend can exceed set budgets by up to 20%. This discrepancy might not be a big deal for low-spend clients, but it can become a significant issue for high-budget accounts. 20% of a $10,000 campaign can really add up!
• Perhaps I’d find the budget metric less misleading if it actually capped daily spending at the predetermined level. Dave Rosborough is an Account Executive at Hanapin Marketing. Follow Dave on Twitter.

Chad Summerhill

My top three metrics are:

1. Profit (total profit, profit-per-conversion, profit-per-click, profit-per-impression)
2. Relative Difference/Change in any PPC metric for internal context (CTR, CR, etc., compared to other search queries, keywords, ads, ad groups, campaigns, date ranges, etc. For example, how does a keyword’s CTR compare to the average CTR of the ad group or campaign?)
3. Quality Score for external context (must be considered alongside Max Profit, but can highlight areas for potential growth) Bonus: What PPC metric do you think is bogus/overrated/a waste of time?

• Impression Share at the campaign level (needs to be analyzed at the ad group, keyword, and search query level).
• Quality Score can be misleading if profitability is ignored (e.g., deleting or pausing low Quality Score keywords without considering their profit contributions).
• And any metric reported without context or actionable insights. Always strive for a “What’s changed” or “Compared to” perspective. Chad Summerhill is the Manager of Digital Marketing at U-Pack Moving and the author of the blog PPC Prospector. He provides free PPC tools for Excel and is a co-founder of both queryminer (search query mining software) and gazel (Excel Add-in for Google Ads). Follow him on Twitter.

Matthew Umbro

1) Total Conversion Value – Make sure you assign a monetary value to your conversions to understand your exact return on investment. For e-commerce sites, this value is likely revenue, while other sites might have a predetermined value for each conversion (e.g., a white paper signup might be valued at $50). This value should be assigned directly within your conversion tracking code. While you can view conversion value through your analytics, I prefer to see cost, conversion value, and ultimately ROAS within the AdWords interface. 2) Conversion Rate – This metric reveals how many clicks are converting at various levels: account, campaign, ad group, keyword, or text ad. I value conversion rate more than another conversion metric, cost per conversion, because it better reflects the relevance of your keyword/ad combination to your landing page. The higher this metric, the more effectively you’re converting visitors. A low cost per conversion is great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a high conversion rate. 3) Click-Through Rate (CTR) – CTR is the most reliable indicator of ad relevance, showing how closely your ads align with search queries. A consistently high CTR across your account generally signifies a well-structured account with compelling, keyword-rich, and engaging text ads. However, CTR only tells half the story. A high CTR with a low conversion rate suggests that the ad’s messaging might not be consistent with the landing page experience, or that your landing page needs optimization. The most overrated metric, in my opinion, is View-through Conversions. This metric simply tells us that your ad appeared on a Display Network site, and the visitor later converted on your site. There’s no way to definitively attribute the conversion to that specific ad or even confirm that the visitor arrived at your site due to the ad. While we can speculate that a view-through conversion resulted from seeing your ad, it’s impossible to know for sure. Additionally, we can’t assign a conversion value to view-throughs. This metric is interesting to see but holds little value due to its lack of substantiation. Matthew Umbro has been in the pay-per-click (PPC) industry since 2007, helping clients across various sectors achieve better ROIs and improved lead generation. He holds his Google Ads Qualification, passing the Fundamentals, Advanced, and Reporting exams, and is MSN adExcellence certified. He also hosts PPC Chat (#ppcchat), a weekly Twitter chat every Tuesday at 12 PM EST, where industry experts discuss various PPC topics. Matthew shares his insights and PPC Chat streamcaps on his personal blog, The PPC Blog.

Joe Vivolo

The first and arguably most critical metric is Conversion Rate. It’s the primary indicator of campaign health, telling us if it’s thriving or needs immediate attention. While it can be misleading (the value of your conversion action ultimately determines ROI), a weak or low conversion rate is usually the first sign of trouble. Conversely, an exceptionally high conversion rate might indicate you’re not attracting enough traffic. The second metric I’d choose is Impressions. This metric reveals the popularity of my chosen keywords and confirms whether I’m targeting sufficiently large keyword groups. Combining this data with my conversion rate provides insights into the effectiveness and relevance of my campaigns in reaching my target audience. A low or “off” impression count might indicate that my bids are too low or that my landing pages lack relevant copy and content. While not particularly meaningful on its own, the impressions metric serves as a gateway to other key data points and helps me form initial assumptions. The final essential PPC metric is Cost per Conversion. This is the make-or-break metric, determining a campaign’s success or failure. Measure your acquisition cost against target costs, acquisition costs from other channels, and the overall effectiveness of the program. Bonus: One particular metric I find misleading – not entirely useless, but definitely something I wouldn’t advise fixating on – is Click-Through Rate (CTR%). While you can’t get that coveted conversion without clicks to your landing page, and CTR can be valuable for statistically comparing messaging variations, it doesn’t tell the whole story and can be easily manipulated. When you factor in the implied Quality Score implications, it’s certainly not something to ignore, but it doesn’t mean much in isolation. Here’s an example. I could easily employ various buzzwords to boost CTR that might not benefit the overall campaign – words like “free,” “cheap,” “50%,” “discount,” etc. So which headline is more likely to garner a higher CTR? “Free Software” or “Very Expensive Software?” This is an exaggerated example, but attracting lots of traffic with catchy messaging is pointless if your landing page doesn’t deliver on the promises made in the ad. Joseph Vivolo, a seasoned search marketing professional with over 8 years of experience, currently serves as the Director of Search Engine Marketing at KoMarketing Associates. (Learn More: How to improve your conversion rate for better website traffic)

And the Most Popular PPC Metrics Are …

The metrics most frequently mentioned by our experts were:

1. Click-through rate (CTR) with 10 votes
2. Cost per Conversion with 6 votes
3. Tie: Conversion Rate and CPA with 5 votes each Bonus answers varied widely, but one pay-per-click metric was repeatedly labeled as useless or overrated: view-through conversions. Would your answers differ? Which PPC metrics are your go-to measures of success? Let us know in the comments!