Notes for owners · Digital marketing
How to write Google Ads copy that earns the click and the call
Search copy answers a question somebody just typed, inside a stack of near identical text blocks, in thirty characters a line, with the pieces shuffled by Google. Write for that and nothing else.
The GullySales team · Updated 21 Sept 2026 · 7 min read
Google Ads copy has one job that no other advertising copy has: it answers a question somebody typed a second ago, while sitting in a stack of four other text blocks that look almost exactly like it. There is no picture to do the work. There are thirty characters to a headline, ninety to a description, and Google reassembles your lines in an order you do not control. Write for that and search copy becomes simple. Write it like a brochure and it disappears into the stack.
The query is the brief
The buyer has already told you what they want, in their own words. The headline's first job is to repeat those words back so that the eye stops.
Somebody typing "cnc machining services peenya" should see "CNC machining in Peenya" and not "Precision Engineering Solutions". The second version is what the company calls itself. The first is what the buyer called it, and on a results page that difference decides the click. Read your own search terms report every fortnight and write headlines out of the lines that are already bringing enquiries.
Every line has to stand alone, and stand beside any other
A responsive search ad takes up to fifteen headlines of thirty characters and four descriptions of ninety, then shows three headlines and two descriptions at a time, in a shuffled order. So a headline that continues the thought of the one before it will, sooner or later, be shown first and read as nonsense.
Write each headline as a complete unit. No "and we also", no clause that needs the previous line. Then read your list as a grid: take any two at random and see whether they contradict each other or repeat the same word twice in one line.
Keep the pins for the things that must appear: a brand name, a statutory line, an offer with a date. Pin everything and you have turned off the only part of this system that works in your favour.
What the thirty characters should be spent on
| Line | What goes in it | Example for a machining shop |
|---|---|---|
| The query mirror | The buyer's own words for the thing | CNC Machining In Peenya |
| The qualifier | Who this is for, or who it is not for | Batch Sizes From 50 Pieces |
| The proof | A fact a competitor cannot copy honestly | 4 VMCs, In-House Inspection |
| The friction remover | The thing they are worried about | Drawings Quoted Same Day |
| The ask | What happens when they click | Send Your Drawing For A Quote |
Notice how much of that is filtering. On search you pay for every click, including the ones from people who were never going to buy from you. Copy that repels the wrong buyer is worth as much as copy that attracts the right one, and it is the part most businesses are too nervous to write.
The assets do half the work
The text advertisement is only part of what shows. Sitelinks give four more short phrases and four more pages to land on. Callouts hold the things that are true but not worth a headline, such as GST invoice, Saturday working, or free site visit. A call asset puts your number on the result itself, which for a locksmith, a plumber or an emergency clinic is the whole point of being there.
Location assets matter more in India than most agencies act like they do. A buyer searching for a supplier wants to know which part of the city you are in before they call, and a Peenya address in the advertisement answers a question that would otherwise cost you the click.
Copy cannot fix the wrong keyword or the wrong page
Two things quietly waste more money than any headline.
The first is a group of keywords too broad for one advertisement to answer. If one ad group holds laser cutting, CNC machining and sheet metal fabrication, then whatever you write is wrong for two of them. One thing you sell, one ad group, one set of headlines.
The second is the page. The visitor who clicked "Drawings Quoted Same Day" has to see that sentence at the top of the page they land on, with a form or a WhatsApp button under it. Sending search traffic to a home page is the most common and the most expensive mistake in Indian small business advertising, and it is why we treat landing page development as part of the advertising work rather than a website job.
For example, a clinic in Rajajinagar advertising physiotherapy sends the clicks to a page about physiotherapy for knee pain, with the timings, the fee for the first consultation, and the same phrase the advertisement used. The home page, with its eleven departments, stays out of the campaign entirely.
What you are not allowed to say
Policies change and they differ by category, so check the current rules in the interface before you write. What has held steady is the direction of travel: claims you cannot substantiate, superlatives such as number one, and competitor brand names in the text will cost you the disapproval. Healthcare, finance and a few other categories carry extra restrictions, and in some of them the advertiser has to be verified before anything runs.
If your trade is one of those, get the account's verification and category questions settled before the copy is written. Rewriting approved copy around a rejection is slower than writing it correctly once.
What to do next
Open your account, take the ten search terms that produced enquiries last month, and write one headline for each in the exact words the buyer used. Then read your current advertisement beside them. If your headlines are about your company and the search terms are about the job, that gap is your click-through rate and your cost per enquiry in one picture.
Google Ads covers the campaign build, the negatives and the monthly search term review. The free audit is where we start, by reading where your enquiries came from before anybody writes new copy.