PPCleaner grew out of more than 10 years spent optimizing Google Ads campaigns

I have worked in digital marketing for more than 15 years, over 10 of them managing and optimizing Google Ads campaigns.

Over the years, I have worked with more than a hundred advertisers, in e-commerce as well as lead generation, and managed several hundred thousand euros in advertising budgets.

Today I am a Google Ads consultant, a media buyer and a Google Partner.

PPCleaner grew out of a very concrete problem I ran into again and again while working on my clients’ accounts.

It all started with search terms

When you manage a Google Ads account, there is one essential task: regularly reviewing what people actually searched for before they clicked on an ad.

The keyword you target in Google Ads and the search term a user actually types are two different things.

And if you don’t keep a close enough eye on those search terms, Google can gradually spend part of the budget on queries that are:

• barely relevant,
• too far from the intent you are after,
• informational when the goal is commercial,
• tied to searches like “free”, “jobs”, “login” and so on,
• or simply of no real value to the advertiser.

On some accounts, a few wasted clicks don’t add up to much.

On others, they can have a very real impact.

When a click costs $10, $20, $50 or more, a handful of bad queries can eat a significant share of the budget in very little time.

That is especially true in high-CPC sectors such as local services, finance, some B2B activities, or any business where every lead is worth a lot.

In those situations, poor traffic quality can quickly push up the cost per conversion and erode campaign profitability.

Essential work, but extremely time-consuming

The solution has been around for a long time: review search terms regularly and add the exclusions you need.

First, there is all the work done before a campaign even launches.

You can anticipate some irrelevant searches and exclude terms like “free”, “jobs”, “hiring”, “login” or other queries that have no value for the business right from the start.

But that initial work is not enough.

Once campaigns are live, new queries keep appearing.

1. You have to read them.
2. Understand their intent.
3. Decide whether they are relevant to the advertiser.
4. Check which campaign they appear in.
5. Decide whether to exclude them.
6. Then choose the right way to exclude them, so you don’t accidentally block valuable traffic.

And do it all again, regularly.

On Search campaigns, but also on Shopping and Performance Max.

With a single account, this stays fairly manageable.

With 10, 20 or more, the review quickly becomes a very time-consuming task.

Even so, it is hard to simply ignore it.

Skipping search term reviews to save time often means letting Google decide on its own how part of the budget gets spent.

So I wanted to find a way to keep the quality of that analysis without spending a big chunk of every day inside search term reports.

Artificial intelligence made it possible

The arrival of artificial intelligence has changed a lot about the way we work.

Today it can automate tasks that used to take a great deal of time, while keeping a level of analysis far beyond simple automated rules.

That is exactly what caught my interest.

Because good search term management cannot be boiled down to a rule like:

“More than 10 clicks and no conversions = exclude.”

A Google Ads account is far more complex than that.

A query can look weak in the short term and still be perfectly relevant.

Conversely, a query can generate traffic without ever having the slightest commercial value.

A good decision depends on context:

• the business,
• the campaign’s objective,
• the product or service being sold,
• the intent behind the search,
• historical performance,
• and each advertiser’s own rules.

That line of thinking is where PPCleaner began to take shape.

Why I built PPCleaner

The idea behind PPCleaner is simple:

automate the repetitive work without blindly automating the decisions.

The goal is to let media buyers, agencies, consultants and advertisers monitor the search terms in their Google Ads campaigns automatically and spot the queries likely to waste their budget.

For the account manager, the benefit is obvious:

less time cleaning up campaigns, more time on strategy.

That means more time to work on ads, landing pages, offers, creatives, campaign structure and growth opportunities.

For the advertiser, the goal matters just as much:

cut wasted spend, improve traffic quality and help bring down the cost per conversion.

If part of the budget goes every month to searches with no commercial value, I would rather see that money reinvested in the queries that can actually bring in customers.

More than 10 years of Google Ads experience built into PPCleaner

PPCleaner was not conceived as an artificial intelligence project that I then tried to find a use for.

It is exactly the opposite.

I started from a problem I had been facing myself for years.

So I set out to build into PPCleaner the methods, reflexes and techniques I use when I analyze my clients’ campaigns by hand.

Over my career, I have worked on very different kinds of challenges:

• e-commerce,
• lead generation,
• local businesses,
• multi-campaign accounts,
• high-volume advertisers,
• and sectors with particularly high CPCs.

That variety taught me one essential thing:

there is no universal list of “bad keywords”.

A query can be completely useless for one business and extremely valuable for another.

It all depends on context.

And that is precisely the logic I want to keep building into PPCleaner.

My vision for PPCleaner

I don’t want PPCleaner to become just another Google Ads dashboard full of charts.

My goal is to make it a true assistant for analyzing and cleaning up search terms.

A tool that can regularly monitor the quality of the traffic Google Ads generates, identify problem queries and help campaign managers step in before too much of the budget is wasted.

I also want the tool to stay simple to use.

PPCleaner should be just as useful to an agency managing dozens of accounts as to a business running its own Google Ads campaigns.

Automation should not make Google Ads more complicated.

On the contrary, it should let people focus on the decisions that really matter.

A tool built from real-world problems

I still manage Google Ads campaigns myself.

That matters a great deal in how I develop PPCleaner.

Features are not dreamed up from theory or market trends alone.

Very often, they come from concrete situations I have run into directly on real ad accounts.

Whenever a problem keeps coming back in my consulting work, I always ask myself whether there is a way to automate it or simplify it in PPCleaner.

That is the approach I intend to keep as the tool evolves.

PPCleaner will keep evolving with its users

I see PPCleaner as a product that is constantly improving.

If you use the tool and something is missing, an analysis could be better, or a feature could save you more time, I am always interested in your feedback.

The best products are often built from the problems their users run into every day.

In the end, my goal with PPCleaner is quite simple:

build the tool I wish I had when I started managing several Google Ads accounts at once.

If PPCleaner can save a media buyer several hours every week, help an agency keep a closer watch on its accounts and spare an advertiser from wasting part of their budget, then the tool will have done its job.

Alain Abulafya
Founder of PPCleaner
Google Ads Consultant & Media Buyer

A question or a suggestion? Write to support@ppcleaner.com.