How much of every ad euro goes to Google Ads.
What it means
% Google is the share of your total ad spend that went to Google Ads over the period. Every paid channel you feed into the app sits in the denominator, so it describes the budget mix, not the return. It moves when Meta moves, even if search never changed.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Google spend is your Google Ads bill for the period. Total ad spend is that plus every other paid channel feeding into the app.
Worked example. March: Google €12,000, Meta €18,000, total €30,000. % Google = 12,000 ÷ 30,000 = 40%.
April: Google is still €12,000, but Meta drops to €8,000. Total is €20,000 and % Google reads 60%. Search didn't grow by a euro — it became a bigger slice of a smaller budget.
It answers the question
How much of your paid budget goes to people already searching for what you sell? A low share means you're paying to create demand and letting someone else close it.
Why it matters
Search converts intent that already exists, so it's an easy place to lose customers you've already paid to warm up. If you spend almost nothing on Google, a competitor bidding on your brand name can pick up the shoppers your social ads created.
The share is only half the story. A big % Google made mostly of brand terms isn't the same business as one built on non-brand search and Shopping, so split the two before you read a high share as strength.
What good looks like
These bands assume a category people actually search for. If nobody knows to look for what you sell yet, a low share is the honest starting point and the fix is demand, not budget. Split brand from non-brand before you judge a high number.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Take back your own name | Run a brand Search campaign where competitors are bidding on you | % Google up a few points on very cheap clicks | 2–3 days | You start paying for clicks that used to arrive free, so only do it where someone is genuinely bidding against you. |
| Fast Let Shopping run properly | Clean the feed and put budget behind your best-margin products | % Google rises on spend that meets real buying intent | 1–2 weeks | Shopping compares you on price in public — low-margin products can win the click and lose the order economics. |
| Slow Expand non-brand search | Build campaigns around the problem your products solve, not just their names | Google can hold a larger share without cost per new customer rising | 1 quarter | Non-brand costs far more per order than brand, so the account average looks worse for weeks before the volume justifies it. |
| Slow Catch the demand social creates | Match search and Shopping campaigns to whatever your Meta ads are pushing that month | More searches to capture, so the share can grow on the same total budget | 1–2 quarters | It ties the two channels together — pause the social campaign and the search volume you built the budget around goes with it. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
Share and euros move independently. Only together do they tell you who changed what.
You backed search
Real budget went into search and the mix followed. Worth confirming it landed on non-brand, or you've paid more for customers who were already coming.
The mix moved without you
Search looks bigger because the rest got smaller. Nothing improved — the denominator shrank.
You grew faster elsewhere
Search grew, just slower than the rest. Fine while the searches your social ads generate still get caught.
Search is fading out
You're winding down the channel that closes people at the moment they're ready.
One tells you how much budget chases demand that already exists, the other how much creates it. Heavy on Meta and light on Google means you're generating interest and not collecting it; the reverse means you're harvesting a pool nobody is refilling.
Growing the search share while NCPA falls means those campaigns are finding new people. Growing it while NCPA holds still is the brand-term illusion — more budget, the same customers, arriving the way they always did.
Common misreads
It measures budget, not results. A channel you barely fund can't show what it's capable of, so look at what a new customer cost at the spend level you actually ran before writing it off.
Pause a Meta campaign and this number climbs with the Google budget frozen. Check the euro figure on the Google card before you draw any conclusion.
If most of it sits on brand terms, you're paying to close customers other channels found. Split brand out, then decide whether the share is healthy.
Also called
Google Spend Share · Google share of budget · paid search share · SEM mix
See yoursYour % Google for the last 30 days, next to Google and % Meta.
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