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Google Ads for manufacturers: the queries that matter

September 2026 · Advertising · Quebec City

Most of a manufacturer's Google Ads budget goes to keywords that describe the company rather than to the queries a buyer types at the moment of a need. An industrial buyer almost never searches a category name. They search a specification, a standard, a replacement part or a production problem that has stopped a line. Google publishes no average cost per click, no average conversion rate and no average cost per lead, for manufacturing or for any other sector. So you cannot judge an account against an industry average. You can judge it on its structure, and that is what this page gives you.

I manage the ad accounts myself and shoot the videos myself. Nothing is relayed through an account manager. The full method for working with industrial SMEs sits on the industrial marketing page. For the social half of the same budget, see Facebook and Meta advertising.

Only one campaign type catches a need already formed

Google's campaign-type chooser documents six types. Search serves "text ads on search results". Display serves "image ads on websites". Video serves "video ads on YouTube". Performance Max gives you "access all channels from a single campaign with Google AI optimization". Shopping shows "product listings on Google", and App promotes an app across channels. Demand Gen is not on that chooser page at all: Google documents it separately, as campaigns that "capture engagement and action across YouTube (including Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network".

That list settles a question many industrial SMEs ask backwards. Only one of those campaigns reaches somebody who is already searching, and that is the Search campaign. Everything else interrupts a person who was doing something else. Both have their place, but they are not bought with the same argument and they are not judged against the same expectations. A supplier who leads with Performance Max for a technical product should be able to say where the money goes, channel by channel.

A keyword is not a search term

Google separates the two, and that separation explains most wasted industrial budgets. A search term is "a word or set of words a person enters when searching on Google or one of our Search Network sites". A keyword is "a word or set of words that Google Ads advertisers can add to a given ad group so that your ads are targeting the right audience". You buy keywords. You pay for search terms. The gap between them is governed by match type.

Google documents three. On broad match, "ads may show on searches that are related to your keyword, which can include searches that don't contain the direct meaning of your keywords". On phrase match, "ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword", and that meaning can be implied or more specific. On exact match, "ads may show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword". Google also states the coverage order: exact reaches fewer searches than phrase, and phrase fewer than broad.

For a conveyor builder in the Beauce, the consequence is concrete. The keyword "conveyor" on broad match buys school projects, used equipment hunting and job seekers. "Stainless steel belt conveyor for food processing" buys a conversation. What you should demand from a supplier is not a list of a thousand keywords. It is a short list written in your buyers' vocabulary: part numbers, standards, materials, capacities, and the problem the machine solves. If nobody in your plant has read that list, it was written by somebody who does not know your market.

Negative keywords, and what they do not block

Negative keywords "let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers". In an industrial account that is half the work. Jobs, internship, free, used, rental, DIY, course: each of those words pulls clicks that will never become a quote request.

Three documented limits belong in your conversation with a supplier, because they explain why one exclusion list is never enough.

So the question to ask is not "did you add negatives". It is "how often do you read the actual search terms, and who on my side confirms what is industrial and what is not". An exclusion list untouched for six months is the signature of an account left on autopilot.

Presence or interest: the setting that buys traffic outside Quebec

This is the single most useful fact on this page for a Quebec manufacturer. Google offers two advanced location options, and their exact names matter. "Presence or interest" reaches "people in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your targeted locations". "Presence" reaches "people in or regularly in your targeted locations". The first is the default, and the one Google recommends.

In other words, an account left on the default pays for people who are not in Quebec but have shown interest in Quebec. Google frames the same distinction elsewhere as physical location, "where your users are located or regularly located", against location of interest, "locations your users have shown interest in", and confirms that the default uses both.

For a manufacturer that ships across North America, interest is a feature: an engineer in Ohio looking for a Quebec supplier is exactly your buyer. For a machine shop serving only the Quebec City and Chaudière-Appalaches region, it is a quiet leak, and it does not appear in a report that only shows clicks. The decision is yours, not your supplier's, and it is made once: do I want to reach people interested in my region, or only people who are in it.

Google also documents the levels you can target: countries, areas within a country ("depending on the country, you can target regions, cities, or postal codes"), a radius around your plant, and location groups. Radius targeting "requires setting a radius of at least 1 km". For a plant on the edge of town, that floor means a tight ring around the building is not an available strategy.

What a landing page has to do for a technical buyer

Google grades quality through a diagnostic tool called Quality Score, "meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers". It rests on three components: expected clickthrough rate, "the likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown"; ad relevance, "how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user's search"; and landing page experience, "how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad". Each one is reported as Above average, Average or Below average, compared with other advertisers over the last 90 days.

Note what Google does not publish: any curve linking a Quality Score to a price reduction. If a supplier promises you a percentage saving from improving that score, they are inventing a figure Google documents nowhere. The same caution applies to Ad Rank, which Google defines as "a set of values that are used to determine whether your ads are eligible to show and if eligible, where on the page your ads are shown". Google names the factors: your bid amount, the quality of your ads and landing page, the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the person's search, and the expected impact of assets and other ad formats. The bid is one factor out of six.

What that means for an industrial landing page: it has to answer the precise query that triggered it. A search on a tonnage capacity that lands on a "Our products" page loses the buyer, and it shows up in the landing page experience component. A spec sheet, a tolerance, a realistic lead time and visual proof of the actual part do more for your account than a bid adjustment.

What your conversions must measure before you automate bidding

Conversions are the actions customers take after clicking an ad, such as "making a purchase on your website, calling your business, or downloading your app". Google documents four categories: website, app, phone call and offline conversions. Setup begins with choosing what you want to track, and for a manufacturer that is a management decision, not a technical task. A quote request is not worth the same as a catalogue download.

Google is blunt about the point that breaks the most accounts: "Correctly configuring your conversion actions as Primary (biddable) or Secondary (observation-only) is critical. Misconfiguring these settings can prevent Smart Bidding from optimizing effectively." Translated into plant language: if the catalogue download is marked primary, the system will buy catalogue downloads, and it will do it very well.

The conversion window matters just as much, because an industrial cycle is long. The click-through window defaults to 30 days and is settable from 1 to 90 days depending on the conversion source. The engaged-view window defaults to 3 days and the view-through window to 1 day. Google recommends "windows of at least 7 days ... because they provide a richer set of conversion data", and a window change applies only to future conversions, never retroactively. Google also documents enhanced conversions, "a feature that can improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement and unlock more powerful bidding", by sending hashed first-party customer data.

On bidding, Google names four strategies as Smart Bidding: Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value. These are strategies "that use Google AI to optimize for conversions or conversion value in every auction". They can be switched on without prior data, but Google "recommends measuring performance over longer time periods that have at least 30 conversions, such as a month or longer (50 conversions for Target ROAS)", and notes that exact recommendations vary by campaign type.

That is the honest arithmetic a manufacturer should do before signing anything. If your plant receives six real quote requests a month, that volume does not meet Google's recommendation, and no automation fixes it. The answer is not to pad the account with easy conversions to feed the machine. It is to accept that the account is steered differently, and to say so plainly when expectations are being set.

When Google Ads does not apply to your plant

Two situations make this budget pointless, and both are common in Quebec industry. First: your product is specified years ahead by an engineering firm, inside a design package, before any buyer searches for anything. Second: nobody searches your category by name, because the name exists only inside your company and your three competitors.

The signals read before you spend. Look at your last twenty contracts: if eighteen came from a referral, a spec or an existing prime contractor, search is not your channel. Look at the search volume on your real terms: if it is zero or close to zero in Quebec, there is nothing to intercept. Look at who decides: if the decision sits between a project engineer and a spec writer your sales people can name, the list of names is worth more than the bid. Look at duration: a three to five year cycle will outrun any conversion window, including the longest one Google permits.

When those four signals point the same way, the money goes elsewhere: to the relationship with engineering firms, to the technical documentation that ends up inside a spec, and to visual proof of what you actually build. Search advertising earns its place later, on replacement parts, service and maintenance, where the searches exist and the urgency is real.

Sources

If you want to know which of those four signals describes your plant before you open a budget, we can talk it through in fifteen minutes.

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