Why yesterday’s conversions keep changing 👀

At first glance, this feels wrong. Like numbers are moving when they shouldn’t.

But once you understand what’s going on, a lot of Google Ads “mysteries” disappear.

The past is not fixed in Google Ads

One thing most media buyers don’t realize — because nobody really explains it — is that Google Ads keeps rewriting the past.

Not because it’s broken, but because users don’t behave the way reports assume they do.

People click an ad and:

• don’t buy immediately

• think about it

• come back later

• convert days after the click

When that happens, Google doesn’t assign the conversion to “today”.
It assigns it back to the day of the click.

So when you look at yesterday’s numbers today, you’re not seeing the final version yet.

You’re seeing a draft.

This is why performance feels unstable

A lot of decisions are made on data that simply hasn’t finished forming.

Yesterday looks weak → you lower budgets.
Today looks strong → you raise them back.
Tomorrow looks weird again → you change something else.

It feels like the account is unstable, but very often it’s the interpretation that’s unstable.

The data just needs time.

A better question to ask

Instead of asking:

“How many conversions did we get yesterday?”

A much more useful question is:

“How does the number of conversions for one specific day change over the next few days?”

In other words:

• What did Monday look like on Monday?

• What did Monday look like on Tuesday?

• And then on Wednesday, Thursday…

Once you start looking at performance this way, you stop reacting to noise.

A simple way to actually see this

You don’t need anything advanced for this. No databases, no scripts, no magic.

Just Google Sheets and Looker Studio.

The idea is very simple:

• Each day, you note how many conversions a certain click date has

• Tomorrow, you will check again

• You don’t overwrite anything — you just observe how the number grows

After a few days, patterns start to appear.

When you visualize it, it clicks immediately

Once you put this into Looker Studio and draw a simple line chart, everything becomes obvious.

Each day has its own line.
At first, the line climbs.
Then it slows down.
Eventually, it flattens.

Newer days are still “in motion”.
Older days are settled.

That’s the moment when you realize:

“Ah… so that’s why yesterday always looks bad.”

This changes how you work

Once you see this regularly:

• you stop judging yesterday too harshly

• you stop killing campaigns early

• you become much calmer when numbers dip for a day or two

Especially with video, Demand Gen, or anything that isn’t pure Search, this view is priceless.

Not because it makes performance better — but because it stops you from making bad decisions.

Google Ads doesn’t show this on purpose

Google Ads assumes you want today’s answer.

But media buying isn’t real time.
It’s delayed feedback.

And until you actually see that delay, it’s very hard to trust the process.

One last thought

Most “bad days” aren’t bad.
They’re just unfinished.

Once you start looking at how data matures over time, Google Ads becomes far less chaotic — and far more predictable.

And that’s usually the moment when accounts start scaling more smoothly.

What’s next

In the next article, I’ll show exactly how to build this view — step by step — using only Google Sheets and Looker Studio, and how to turn it into clear, insight-driven graphs you can actually use when making decisions.

No overengineering.
No fancy setups.
Just something you can apply to a real account in hours.

💌 Like this newsletter? Let's continue the conversation

Get in touch with us by responding to this email or tagging us on LinkedIn or Instagram, and sharing your thoughts. Your feedback helps us keep our newsletter relevant and interesting.