Why did our Ad Grants CTR drop?
By Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAAdapted from Chapter 10 of The Nonprofit Ad Grant Handbook · Checked against Google's rules November 3, 2026Most falls in click-through rate come from a short list of causes, and the cause is usually the most recent change. Check what changed first. Common culprits are a new campaign with broad keywords or wide locations, broad match, locations that are too wide, weak ads, fewer brand searches, and a big new source of impressions.
The first rule of diagnosis
Check what changed before you check anything else. We treat a month-to-date click-through rate under 6% as a warning, a full point before Google's line. Below 6%, find out why this week.
An illustration from the handbook. The land trust is a composite, not a real organization.
On the 12th of the month, the stewardship coordinator at a land trust read the month-to-date click-through rate: 5.4%. She opened the change history that afternoon, and it explained the slide in one line. Ten days earlier, a board member who loved hiking had set up a new campaign called "Hiking trails," with keywords such as "hiking trails near me" and "waterfall hikes." Its location was set to the whole country, and its keywords matched the searches of anyone, anywhere, planning a hike. The campaign had brought in more than half of the account's impressions in the past week, at a click-through rate of about 1.5%.
The usual suspects
In our experience, these account for most drops.
- A new campaign or ad group with broad keywords, wide locations or both.
- Broad match, added to existing keywords, switched on by an automatic recommendation, or reached through AI Max.
- Locations that are too wide, or set to reach people "interested in" an area rather than in it.
- Learning searches, which bring many impressions and few clicks.
- Weak or outdated ads, especially after a program changes and the ads don't.
- A drop in brand searches, which usually carry the highest click-through rate in the account. A brand campaign paused, or a new organization with a similar name, can take a point off the average.
- A big new source of impressions, such as Performance Max or a seasonal surge in searches, that changes the mix.
One account we reviewed had all of the first three at once. Almost all of its keyword spending was on broad match, AI Max was switched on in two campaigns, and its locations covered the whole country. Its Search click-through rate fell below 5%.
Matching the symptom to a cause
Work through this table from the top.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| CTR fell soon after a specific date | A change made that day | Change history, filtered to that week |
| One campaign has far more impressions than before | New keywords, broader match or wider locations in that campaign | Campaign's keywords, match types and location settings |
| Many impressions from searches that don't fit your work | Broad match, AI Max or overly general keywords | Search terms report, sorted by impressions |
| Impressions from outside your area | Locations too wide, or "presence or interest" set | Campaign location settings and the locations report |
| CTR fell evenly across all campaigns | Ads or assets weakened, or a change across the account | Ads and assets; automatically applied recommendations |
| Brand campaign has fewer impressions | Brand paused, budget-limited, or a competitor on your name | Brand campaign status and its search terms |
| Search CTR is fine but account CTR fell | Performance Max or another campaign type changed the mix | Campaign type breakdown |
| CTR swings wildly week to week | Very low volume | Impressions; read the number only once there's enough data |
Reading the change history
- Set the date range to cover a few weeks before the drop.
- Look first for new campaigns and ad groups, then new keywords and match type changes, then location changes, then anything attributed to Google's automatic recommendations.
- Note the date of each, and compare it with the date the click-through rate started to fall. The change closest to the start of the slide is usually the one.
If the change history shows nothing, look at the search terms report for the same period, sorted by impressions. A sudden flood of a new kind of search, such as a news story that made your cause briefly popular or a seasonal topic you don't serve, can pull the number down without any change in the account at all.
Mistakes in diagnosis
Fixing before finding. Pausing keywords at random can raise the number for a week while the real cause, a new campaign or a setting, keeps doing damage.
Looking only at the account total. The total hides where the problem is. Break it down by campaign, then ad group, then keyword.
Trusting tiny numbers. Two impressions and no clicks reads as 0%. One impression and one click reads as 100%. Neither means anything. A keyword at 0% with ten impressions isn't the problem. A keyword at 1.5% with three thousand impressions probably is.
Blaming Google. Sometimes the cause is outside your control, such as a surge in general searches. Usually it's a change someone made, which means someone can change it back.
Once you know the cause, section 10.3 of the handbook has the CTR rescue, a short, mechanical procedure that brings an account's click-through rate back above 5% within days. Think of it as a tourniquet. It stops the bleeding so the account survives the month and buys you time to fix the cause properly.
Questions
Our CTR is between 5% and 6%. Do we need the full rescue?
If the number is between 5% and 6% and falling, you can run a lighter version. Find the cause, fix it, and run the rescue only on the part of the account the cause affected.
When should we run the full rescue?
When last month closed below 5%, when the month-to-date click-through rate is below 5% and there's less than half the month left, when Google has sent a warning about click-through rate, or when the grant has been deactivated and you're preparing to request reactivation.
How much can we read into the number early in the month?
Not much. Early in the month it's based on only a few days and can swing a lot. By the second week it's settling, and by the third week it's close to where the month will finish, unless something changes.
Why act if we're still above 5%?
Expected click-through rate is part of how Google decides where, and whether, your ads appear. An account that's technically compliant at 5.1% is still showing less often, and in worse positions, than one at 7%.
See something wrong or out of date? Tell us
Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAJose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTA, is the CEO of 3nity. He founded the company in 2001 to serve the people who serve people, after working as Internet Director at a media network. He built a career website that was acquired by Salem Communications in 2004, and created the 3nity Web Presence Platform. Through Nonprofit Marketing Center, a division of 3nity, he and his team help churches and nonprofits of every kind bring resources and awareness to their missions, including by helping them get the most from the Google Ad Grant.