What you pay per click, how much of the available demand you are getting, and what a customer is worth to you. A high cost per click next to a healthy cost per sale is a price, not a problem; a modest cost per click that buys the wrong searches is the expensive one. The account reports all three, and the fastest route to the answer runs through impression share — because it tells you in one line whether you are losing to money or to quality.
Search impression share is the impressions you received on the Search Network divided by the impressions you were eligible to receive. The two companion columns are the diagnosis: Search lost IS (budget) is the percentage of time your ads did not show because of insufficient budget, and Search lost IS (rank) is the percentage lost to poor Ad Rank in the auction. Budget loss is reported at campaign level only; rank loss is available at campaign and ad group level. Read those two before touching a bid — they point at opposite fixes, and the data can take 24 to 48 hours to settle.
Losing to budget: you are affordable but absent — the lever is the budget, or fewer things to spend it on
Losing to rank: you are present but outranked — the levers are ad quality, landing page and bid, in that order of durability
A dash instead of a number usually means too little traffic or a new keyword, not a broken report
Google describes Quality Score as a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how your ad quality compares with other advertisers, on a scale of 1 to 10 at keyword level — and states plainly that it is not an input in the ad auction. Chasing the number itself is therefore wasted effort; its three components are the actual instructions. Expected clickthrough rate is the likelihood your ad is clicked when shown, ad relevance is how closely the ad matches the intent behind the search, and landing page experience is how relevant and useful the page is to the person who clicked. Each of the three is a piece of work on the page or the ad, not a setting.
Google defines the recommended average daily budget as the estimated lowest budget at which you would not lose any impressions to budget constraints — that is, the amount that takes Search lost IS (budget) to zero. It is a ceiling marker, not advice: below it your ads still run, spread across the day, and daily spend is not allowed to exceed twice the average daily budget. If the recommended figure is far above what the account can afford, the honest response is a narrower campaign rather than a thinner one — fewer keywords, tighter locations, the hours that convert — so that the budget you do have is not spread across demand you cannot serve.
Google's own list of what makes Search performance move covers recent changes to account or campaign settings, conversion tracking setup and conversion delay, bids and bid targets, budget settings, ad quality, targeting settings and overlaps, policy and ad review status, other account issues, auction dynamics and lost impression share. Competition is on that list once; everything else is yours. Google suggests starting with Explanations — the blue dotted values in the table that say what changed — and the Ad preview and diagnosis tool when ads are not appearing at all, which is a different question with its own order of checks.
Confirm the rise is real by comparing actual CPC over a longer window rather than two days; read lost impression share to see whether it is budget or rank; read the search terms report to see what you are actually buying, and add the negatives that follow from it — our Search Ads guide covers match types and search terms in detail. Only then look at bids and bid strategy. And keep the real measure in view: a click has no value of its own, so judge the campaign by cost per conversion, which depends on measurement you can trust rather than on the price of attention.
Accuracy check: reviewed against current Google Ads Help documentation on 1 October 2026.
No. Google says you are often charged less, sometimes much less, than your maximum CPC: you pay only what is minimally required to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the Ad Rank of the competitor immediately below you. With no competitor below you, you pay the reserve price.
Lost impression share. Search lost IS (budget) is the share of time your ads did not show because of insufficient budget; Search lost IS (rank) is the share lost to poor Ad Rank. Budget is available at campaign level only, rank at campaign and ad group level.
Not directly. Google describes Quality Score as a diagnostic tool, on a 1 to 10 scale at keyword level, and states it is not an input in the ad auction. Its three components — expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience — point at the real work: a more relevant ad and a better landing page.
Yes. Google says Ad Rank thresholds, and the resulting actual CPCs, are typically higher for ads above the search results, because that position is more prominent. A higher average position with a higher CPC is a trade, not a fault.
Google defines it as the estimated lowest budget at which you would not lose any impressions to budget constraints. Below it, ads still run but are spread across the day, and daily spend is not allowed to exceed twice the average daily budget.
Everything you need to run Search yourself is here. Search is also where budgets leak fastest — and the channel we are strongest in, so we can take the account from here.
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