What Happens to Your ROAS After a Google Ads Suspension?

So here’s a story I hear all too often — and this one came straight from the YouTube comments:

“My ads were smashing it with a 300% ROAS in April. Then in May, Google suspended my account. After appealing, it was reopened about 15 days later… and ever since, I’ve been struggling to hit even a 50% ROAS. What happened?!”

If you’ve ever had your Google Ads account suspended (even temporarily) and your performance tanked afterwards, let’s unpack what might be going on, and what you can do about it.

A Sudden Drop in ROAS After Suspension

Let’s be clear on the situation: this advertiser was consistently hitting 200–300% ROAS, getting 400+ conversions per campaign in April. Then came the dreaded account suspension. After two weeks of downtime, they got back in… only to find ROAS had crashed to below 50%.

That’s a brutal swing.

And their first question was: “Did the suspension itself cause the drop?”

The short answer: Possibly. But not always in the way you think.

What Bid Strategy Are You Using?

The first thing I always ask in these situations is: “What bid strategy are you using now?” Because often, the real cause of poor performance isn’t the suspension itself, it’s the changes you made in response to the suspension.

In this case, the advertiser switched away from Target ROAS and Target CPA — the same bid strategies they were using when performance was good and instead went with something else.

This is a red flag.

If you were using a smart bidding strategy like Target ROAS, and it was working, then suddenly switching away from it will definitely impact performance.

Smart bidding strategies rely on data, conversion data especially, to optimise performance. When you stop feeding the machine, or change your targets, results often tank.

So the suspension may have been the trigger, but the drop in ROAS likely came from the changes you made in reaction to it.

Are You Letting Google’s Machine Learning Work?

The original campaigns were running well.

Post-suspension, the advertiser ditched smart bidding and started second-guessing things.

That’s completely understandable. It’s easy to panic when results fall off a cliff. But it’s also one of the worst times to change too many variables at once.

If you’re using Performance Max or Search campaigns and not giving Google enough conversions or a clear ROAS/CPA target, it gets confused. The machine learning models don’t know what “success” looks like anymore.

Pro tip: If you go back to using Target ROAS, give it at least 100 conversions before judging performance. Fewer than that, and the system just doesn’t have enough signal to optimise well.

Indirect Impacts: What Really Happens During a Suspension?

Let’s talk about direct vs. indirect impacts of an account suspension.

Direct impact

Sometimes, your account gets reopened but with lower Quality Scores, disrupted ad history, or lost learnings. This can affect your rankings and ad delivery.

But honestly? This is rare, especially if the suspension wasn’t for anything shady.

Indirect impact

This is the real killer.

The downtime often leads to panic changes: turning off campaigns, switching bid strategies, rebuilding things from scratch. That disrupts the system, kills your learning phase, and introduces a whole bunch of new variables.

When campaigns relaunch, Google has to relearn everything — audiences, bids, performance data. And that process can take weeks.

So while the suspension may not directly kill your ROAS, all the changes you made after might have done the damage.

Audience Targeting Might Be Too Narrow

In this case, the advertiser was running:

• 2 Performance Max campaigns focused on audience/visitor targeting.

• 2 Search campaigns also focused on audience targeting.

And they noticed something interesting: hardly any new customers coming in. It felt like Google was just hammering the same old customer list again and again.

That’s likely exactly what’s happening.

PMAX loves targeting users that already know your brand. It’ll optimise for the easy wins first: people who've visited your site, added to cart, or purchased before.

So if your audience signals are too narrow, PMAX and even Search might just keep retargeting your existing customer base over and over. That doesn’t help new customer acquisition and it can drag your ROAS down if existing customers aren’t buying again at the same rate.

If new customer acquisition is important to you (and let’s be honest, it usually is), then your targeting needs to reflect that.

What To Do If This Happens To You

If your Google Ads account was suspended, then reopened and now your ROAS is in the gutter, here’s what I recommend doing:

1. Go back to the bid strategy that worked.

If Target ROAS or Target CPA worked before, try them again. But let them run long enough — at least 100 conversions — before deciding they’re “not working”.

2. Audit your audience targeting.

Check if your PMAX or Search campaigns are leaning too heavily on existing customers. Add in new customer segments, or set up separate campaigns targeting broader intent or interest-based audiences.

3. Look at conversion volume and quality.

ROAS is revenue ÷ ad spend. So if conversions drop, or if the average order value tanks, your ROAS will follow.

Compare pre-suspension vs post-suspension:

• Are you still getting 400+ conversions per campaign?

• Are you attracting the same high-value customers?

4. Don’t panic-rebuild.

Avoid starting everything from scratch unless it’s absolutely necessary. Give your existing campaigns time to re-optimise and gather data again. The machine learning system can recover but only if you give it the right signals.

Conclusion

Getting your Google Ads account suspended can feel like a gut punch — especially when your ROAS collapses after it’s reinstated. But the real danger often comes from what you do next.

In most cases, it’s not the suspension that destroys performance. It’s the knee-jerk changes made in response — changing bid strategies, rebuilding campaigns, or narrowing targeting too much.

If this happens to you:

• Don’t panic.

• Return to the strategies that worked before (Target ROAS or Target CPA).

• Give the system enough time and data to re-optimise.

• Rebalance your targeting to bring in new customers — not just the same old ones.

With a calm approach and data-backed adjustments, your ROAS can bounce back stronger than ever.

How to See the Real Performance of Your Recent Google Ads

Have you ever looked at your Google Ads results over the past few days and thought:

“Blimey, what happened to my conversions?”

I’ve been there. You spot a sudden drop in conversions, panic a little, and start wondering whether it’s time to shake things up in your account.

But here’s the thing...

That drop? It might not even be real.

Before you go tweaking bids, killing creatives, or nuking entire campaigns, you need to understand a little-known reporting trap inside Google Ads… and how to escape it.

Most Advertisers Are Looking at the Wrong Columns

By default, Google Ads reports conversions in a way that can severely undercount your performance, especially over the past few days.

That’s because the standard columns (Conversions, Conversion Value, ROAS, etc.) use what’s called “ad click date attribution”. Which means they date the conversion back to the day of the ad click, not the day the sale actually happened.

Sounds innocent, right?

Well… it’s not. Especially if your product has any sort of buying delay or consideration window.

Example:

A shopper clicks your ad on Monday. They don’t buy right away. On Tuesday, they return directly to your site directly (no ad click) and finally place an order.

Shopify or GA4 will say: “That’s a Tuesday sale.”

But Google Ads will say: “Nope. That sale happened on Monday.”

Which means if you look at Tuesday in your Google Ads account, it will look like nothing happened… when in fact, you did just fine.

This is what’s known as conversion lag.

And if you don’t know how to account for it, you’ll always feel like your performance is worse than it really is, particularly when reviewing the last 1-7 days.

Fixing It: Use the “By Time” Columns

Here’s what I want you to do next time you check performance:

Step 1: Add These Columns

In Google Ads:

• Go to Columns > Modify Columns.

• Under Conversions, tick:

• Conversions (by conv. time).

• Conversion value (by conv. time).

These will report conversions based on when they actually occurred, like Shopify and GA4 do.

Step 2: Create a Custom Metric

If you’re in ecommerce, you’ll want to create a custom ROAS by conversion time column:

• Name: ROAS by conv. time.

• Formula: Conversion value (by conv. time) / Cost.

If you’re lead gen, create a CPA by conversion time column instead:

• Name: CPA by conv. time.

• Formula: Cost / Conversions (by conv. time).

Now line these new columns up right next to your standard ones. Compare recent performance, say, the last 3 days.

You might be shocked.

In many accounts I’ve reviewed, the "by time" numbers are 20-40% higher than the default ones for recent days.

That’s 40% of revenue and performance that was already there, they’re just hidden from you by default reporting.

How Big Is Your Conversion Lag?

Every business has conversion lag, even if you’re selling cheap, low-consideration products.

But if you’re selling something expensive or high-consideration (think luxury mattresses, jewellery, custom products), the lag gets longer.

Typical Examples:

• Low consideration product: 90% of sales happen same-day, 10% happen later.

• High consideration product: Only 60% of sales happen same-day. Up to 40% happen 12+ days later.

So if you only ever look at the last 3–7 days in your account using standard conversion metrics… well, you’re flying blind.

How to Check Your Actual Lag:

Go here in Google Ads:

1. Tools & Settings > Measurement > Attribution.

2. Set a long date range (last 90 days).

3. Click into Path Metrics.

4. Review the Day Analysis report.

You’ll see exactly how many of your conversions come in the same-day, +1 day, +2 days, all the way to 12+ days.

I recently saw an ecommerce account with 30% of revenue happening more than a day after the click, and 8% taking more than 12 days.

In cases like that, if you're analysing anything less than 2 weeks old using standard columns, you’ll always underreport.

So When Should You Use Each Metric?

Great question. Here are my guidelines:

Use standard conversion columns for:

• Making campaign optimisation decisions.

• Understanding what Google Ads caused and when.

• Analysing the impact of past changes or experiments.

Use “by time” conversion columns for:

• Checking very recent performance (within the last 7–14 days).

• Comparing against Shopify, GA4, or other platforms.

• Setting expectations for lagged results.

They serve different purposes and using the wrong one at the wrong time can send you in the wrong direction.

TL;DR

If you’re seeing poor performance in the past few days in Google Ads, check the “by time” columns before you panic.

They’ll show you the real numbers and they often tell a much better story.

Then, use the Attribution report to understand your actual conversion lag.

And finally, don’t ditch the standard columns. Just know when and why to use each view.

To truly understand your Google Ads performance, you need to account for conversion lag and know when to use “standard” vs “by time” metrics. The default columns often underreport recent conversions, leading you to believe your campaigns are underperforming — when they might not be. By checking the right columns, building custom ROAS or CPA formulas, and reviewing the Attribution Path Metrics report, you can stop making knee-jerk decisions and start optimising with confidence.