A 14-page ad report, and one word you can actually understand: “Total”. Sound familiar? A business owner does not need to know how to set up ads, but does need to read the report on them: these numbers decide whether you keep paying or change course.
Below are the eight words that make up our weekly client report: these are the figures we send every week. Next to each number in it stands the change against the previous period in percent: “+10% ↑” means 10% more than last time. If the previous period was zero, a percentage cannot be calculated, and the report says “no data”. For local businesses the report also has a block from the company’s Google profile (“Directions”, “Calls from the profile”), and shops get extra lines about revenue.
For each word: what it means in plain language, an example with arithmetic, the trap, and what to check yourself. All sums here are made up for the sake of counting, not real data. We checked the column names against Google’s help in English on 11 October 2026; in your account they may differ slightly depending on language and interface version. Most numbers sit in the “Campaigns” section, and if a column is missing, you add it through the “Columns” menu.
1. Spend: how much money went into ads
What it is. The amount Google charged over the period. It is what you paid, not what you earned.
Example. 5,000 for the week against 4,000 the week before: spend is up 25%.
The trap. Look not at the sum itself but at what you got for it: how many enquiries and at what price (words 4 and 5). If spend rose by a quarter and enquiries stayed the same, it was a bad week. If enquiries doubled, it was a good one. Why spend in a day sometimes exceeds the daily budget we covered in a separate article.
2. Impressions: how many times the ad was shown
What it is. The number of times the ad appeared on a screen. These are not people or customers: one person can see it five times.
Example. Five people seeing it five times each makes 25 impressions, not 25 visitors.
The trap. A million impressions sounds loud, but on its own it sells nothing. If a contractor boasts about impressions in a report, ask how many turned into clicks and enquiries.
3. Clicks from ads: how many times the ad was clicked
What it is. The number of clicks on the ad. A click means someone landed on your site, but that is a visitor, not yet a customer.
What to check yourself. Which searches the clicks came from. In the account it is the search terms report. If half the searches are not about your business (free, another city, jobs), the money went elsewhere. The fix is negative keywords: words you do not want your ad to show for.
4. Conversions from ads: the action you pay for
What it is. An enquiry, a call, an order. What counts as a conversion is set up in the ad account. The “Conversions” column shows the number of conversions from your primary conversion actions.
The main question for any report. What exactly was counted here? In our experience, a click on a phone number or on a messenger button is not yet a call or an enquiry. A solid base is submitted forms, a separate number for ads that counts real calls (call tracking), and sending deals from your CRM back to the account.
What to do yourself. Open “Goals” → “Conversions” in the account and read the list of actions that are counted. If “phone click” is the main action and there are no forms, the report is not showing enquiries.
5. Cost per conversion: what one enquiry costs
What it is. Spend divided by conversions. In Google’s account this column is called “Cost / conv.”; in our report the line is “Cost per conversion”.
Example. 5,000 and 25 enquiries give 200 per enquiry.
What it is for. This is the key number for services. Compare it with what you earn from one customer. If a customer leaves you 1,500, an enquiry costs 200, and one in five enquiries becomes a customer, then a customer costs 1,000. Count to the end, not to the enquiry.
The trap. Cost per enquiry is only as good as the enquiries themselves. If many of them are junk, a cheap number is worth nothing.
6. Revenue from ads: how much the ads sold
What it is. For shops: the sum of orders from ads. In Google’s account it is the “Conv. value” column (in the older view, “Total conv. value”).
Example. 40 orders worth 50,000: revenue from ads is 50,000.
The trap. This is revenue, not profit. Cost of goods and delivery are not included, and Google has no concept of profit.
7. ROAS: revenue from ads divided by spend
What it is. How much sales revenue each unit of ad money brought. Spent 10,000, sold 50,000: ROAS 500%.
Checking against Google. Practitioners call this ratio ROAS. In Google’s help the matching column is called “Conv. value / cost” and is described as an estimate of return on investment; the word ROAS does not appear there. It is the same idea under different names.
The trap. A high ROAS is not yet profit: it all depends on margin. Break-even ROAS is simple: 1 divided by your margin. A 25% margin means a break-even ROAS of 400%; if the report shows 300%, you are losing money even though “300%” sounds nice.
8. Conversions Local: actions on Google Maps
What it is. For businesses with a street address, our report counts two kinds of actions separately: “Conversions Site” (enquiries and orders on the website) and “Conversions Local” (actions on Google Maps: how many times, after an ad, someone requested directions to you or tapped “call” on the business listing). Each has its own cost: “Cost per conv. Site” and “Cost per conv. Local”.
Example. 3,000 spent on campaigns for the site brought 20 enquiries, 2,000 spent on Maps campaigns brought 40 direction requests and calls from the listing: cost per conversion Site is 150, Local is 50. The second number is smaller, but you cannot compare them directly: they are different actions.
The trap. A route is not yet a visit, a tapped button is not yet a conversation. These are intentions, not customers.
What to do yourself. Compare with reality: how many people actually came or called in the same week. If there are many routes but no more guests, do not treat the Local numbers as “enquiries”.
What is not in our report, and what else is
CTR (the share of impressions that ended in a click), average cost per click and impression share (how many of the possible impressions you got) are useful to us in the work, but they do not answer the owner’s question “how many enquiries and at what price”; if needed, you can see them in the account. We wrote about which competitors rank above you in the article on auction statistics. “Norms” for these metrics circulate online, but Google’s help has none.
The report also has lines that are no longer about ads but about site analytics (Google Analytics): “Sessions” (visits from all sources), “Conversions (Key events)” (enquiries from the whole site), and for shops “Transactions” and “Total revenue”. “Conversions from ads” and “Conversions (Key events)” are different numbers: the first show what the ads counted for themselves, the second all the site’s enquiries from all sources.
Why conversions arrive late
A fresh week in the account almost always looks worse than it was. There are two reasons.
First: Google records a conversion on the day of the ad click, not the day of the enquiry or purchase. Clicked on Monday, ordered on Thursday: the conversion is added to Monday, so the numbers for past days are still changing. Google’s help on data discrepancies advises adding the “Conversions (by conv. time)” column when comparing with analytics; it counts by the day of the conversion itself.
Second: Google does not process data instantly, and actions on Maps arrive last.
From our practice (a September 2026 measurement on local businesses): the next morning a day is only 3–45% filled, the rest arrives within 2–4 days, then roughly 1% a day. The delay is in Google’s processing: from click to conversion, 92–95% of actions in our accounts happen on the first day, so people are not “thinking for a week”. So do not draw conclusions from yesterday and do not switch off a campaign over a “collapse” for yesterday and the day before.
For the same reason we send the weekly report on Thursday, not Monday. On Tuesday the week for local businesses is 82–93% complete, on Thursday 91–100%. A Monday report shows the week worse than it was. This is our measurement on specific accounts, not a Google rule.
Summary
Spend says how much went out, impressions and clicks say the ad was seen. Conversions and cost per enquiry answer the main thing: whether there are enquiries and at what price. Revenue and ROAS matter for shops, but they are revenue, not profit. Conversions Local show intentions on Maps, not guests. Read them together and always ask: what exactly was counted here? How long to wait before drawing conclusions, we covered in the article on how long to wait for ad results. To see how we build campaigns, go to the search advertising section.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request: we will check what exactly counts as an enquiry, where the money goes, and whether the numbers in your report are true.