Google will quietly raise your ad costs in August. The fix takes an hour this week.
Five changes from the last two weeks that actually matter for lean marketing teams, each with the move to make. Plus what we checked so you can safely ignore it.
This is the weekly format: what changed, who it hits, and the move a lean team should make, with sources for every claim. When a category is quiet we say so instead of inflating trivia. Five signals cleared the bar this week; two of them are urgent.
Google Ads: your target is about to become your price
Starting August 17, Google Ads campaigns that are budget-limited and use target-based bidding (target CPA or target ROAS) will deliver at or near the target you set, instead of beating it. Today a budget-capped campaign with a $10 target often delivers well under it; after the change, costs drift up toward whatever you once told Google you would accept. A new Bid Target Adjustment Tool arrives July 6, and Google has confirmed it will not adjust your targets for you.
Who it hits: most small advertisers, because small budgets are almost always the binding constraint, and set-and-forget accounts with loose, stale targets will pay more without any visible change in their settings.
- The move: pull the last 30 days of actual CPA or ROAS against the stated target for every budget-limited campaign. Wherever actuals beat the target, tighten the target to match the actuals, now or with the July 6 tool. An hour of work, done once, before August 17.
Google Ads Help: changes to target based bid strategiesPPC Land coverage
Shopify Plus: your checkout logic may already be dead
Shopify's legacy Scripts, the Plus-only system for custom discount, shipping, and payment logic at checkout, permanently stopped executing on June 30 after two prior extensions. Stores that did not migrate to Shopify Functions or an app lost that logic mid-summer, with no grace period. The failure is silent: tiered discounts, shipping-rate rules, or hidden payment methods simply stop working, and nobody gets an alert.
Who it hits: Shopify Plus merchants and the agencies running them. Standard-plan stores are unaffected.
- The move: place a real test order on any Plus store you touch this week and verify discounts, shipping rates, and payment options behave as expected. If something broke, run Shopify's Scripts customizations report to inventory what was lost, then rebuild it with Functions or a public app.
Google reviews are vanishing from local profiles
Since late June, businesses have reported reviews disappearing from Google Business Profiles, some losing hundreds, and new reviews being paused on affected listings. Google confirmed on July 3 that it is investigating, that its systems remove suspicious reviews and can temporarily pause reviews on a profile, and that incorrectly removed reviews will be restored. No timeline was given.
Who it hits: local service businesses hardest, where review count and rating drive both the local pack and customer trust, and the agencies fielding the panicked calls.
- The move: export or screenshot dated review counts and ratings for every location you manage, so you have a record if you need to escalate. If a profile is affected, report it in Google's forum and wait. Do not run a review-solicitation push right now: a sudden spike in review velocity is exactly the pattern the abuse systems are flagging.
Search Engine Land, with Google's statementGoogle Business Profile forum thread
Two quick checks
Google ran its June spam update fast: announced June 24, done June 26, globally, with no new policies. Compare Search Console clicks for June 20 to 23 against June 27 to 30. A clean break at the rollout means auditing against the spam policies (scaled AI content, doorway pages, keyword stuffing); no break means file it and move on.
Shopify also switched on agentic commerce by default for every store in its Summer Editions: AI shopping agents can now read your catalog and build carts through the new Universal Commerce Protocol, whether or not you did anything. Open the new Agentic section in Shopify admin, confirm the exposure matches your intent, and clean up product data on your top 20 SKUs so an agent parsing them cold gets accurate answers.
Checked, and quiet
Email deliverability: no new mailbox-provider requirements this window. The standing regime still applies: authentication aligned (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and spam complaints under 0.1 percent. TikTok, LinkedIn, and X shipped nothing in this window that changes what a small team should do. Meta announced a wave of AI ad features around Cannes, but almost all of it is pre-release; the one piece worth taking now is the one-click Conversions API setup in Events Manager, if you are still tracking with the pixel alone.
That is the format: what changed, who it hits, and the move, every week, sources included, quiet weeks admitted. Subscribe below and it arrives by email. Add your site and a future post may diagnose your business: real scores and the plan we would write.
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