Mathew PaquetChecklist · 4 min read

The Website Offer Audit

Find every offer your website is still making before Google Ads puts it in an ad, fix it, and decide whether automated promotions stay on.

01 Are your campaigns in?

Google calls this automated promotions. Google's email says it will "automatically identify and extract high-quality promotions, such as coupons and deals, from your website and apply them directly to your campaigns." It is on unless you switch it off, and for now it applies only to campaigns that meet all three of these:

Search or Performance Max. Open each of those campaigns in Google Ads.
A location asset is attached. A location asset is your business address linked to your ads, usually from your Google Business Profile.
No promotion you created yourself. Campaigns that already run a manual promotion are skipped.

How Google checks an offer. Each automated promotion runs for less than 24 hours. Google can switch it back on as long as it can verify the offer is still visibly available on your website. So the page is the check.

02 Find every offer your site is making

Search your own website the way Google reads it. Go to Google and run each of these, with your own domain:

Five searches
site:yourdomain.com "percent off"
site:yourdomain.com "% off"
site:yourdomain.com sale
site:yourdomain.com free
site:yourdomain.com deal OR code

Every result is a line that could end up in your ad. Look past the homepage:

Old landing pages. Category pages that rank fine, so nobody touches them. The footer, which shows on every page. Pages built for a campaign years ago and never taken down. Branch or location pages with their own specials.
03 Fix what you find

A promotion in an ad is a short bold label and up to two lines of text. Google's guidance says a local promotion should state when it expires, how to redeem it and its conditions. Write each offer so it survives being shortened.

Ended: delete it from the page. Don't just hide it.
Has conditions: put them next to the number. Same sentence, not a separate terms page. For example: "20% off orders over [amount], in store only."
One location only: say so in plain words. Your ads run for every location.
Has an end date: write the date on the page. Google says it expects to read start and end dates in the future.
04 Keep it, control it, or switch it off

Keep it on: offers that are simple, current and the same everywhere

Once a week, open Assets and filter the asset type by Promotion. Look for Google AI in the Added by column. Hover over it to see where the offer came from. Google's email says assets with zero impressions won't appear, so this list only shows offers people have already seen. Segment the campaign report by click type, and compare conversions before and after. Google says results often improve, but gives no figures.

Control it: offers with conditions, by location, or that need sign-off

Create your own promotion on the campaigns that matter, with your exact wording and real start and end dates. Google skips any campaign that already runs a promotion you made.

Switch it off

Assets → the three dots → Account level automated assets → the three dots → Advanced settings → Automated promotions → Off. Google asks for a reason.

Two things to know. Google describes this switch only for the whole account, not campaign by campaign. And afterwards, go back to the promotions list and check that nothing Google added is still there.

Sources

Mathew's LibraryLibrary card
Free access

Keep reading free with your library card

One email opens this checklist and all 3 resources in Mathew's library. No account, no password.

It opens right here, and a copy goes to your inbox. You'll also get The Operator Notes. Unsubscribe in one click.

Thanks
You finished it
Now do one thing

Search your own site for "% off", "sale" and "code" before you decide anything about the setting.

Saving works best in your phone's browser. A copy is also in your inbox.