Most Brisbane business owners are being lied to. Agencies love to boast about a '90% Search Impression Share' as if it’s a gold medal. It isn’t. In fact, if your impression share is too high, you’re likely overpaying for mediocre traffic and starving your most profitable segments of budget.
Impression Share (IS) is a metric of opportunity, not a metric of success. It tells you how often your ad showed up versus how often it could have shown up. But in 2026, Google’s auction environment is more aggressive than ever. Chasing 100% share is a vanity project that usually results in a plummeting ROI.
Here is the cold truth: You don’t want to be everywhere. You want to be everywhere that pays. Here is how to actually optimise your impression share for profit, not ego.
The Two Reasons You’re Losing Share (And Which One to Ignore)
Google breaks down lost impression share into two categories: Budget and Rank.
1. Lost IS (Budget): This is a math problem. Your daily limit is too low to cover the total search volume. 2. Lost IS (Rank): This is a quality and bid problem. Your Ad Rank (Bid x Quality Score) wasn't high enough to get you on the page.
Most 'experts' will tell you to just increase your budget. That is lazy marketing. If you are losing share due to budget, it means you are spreading your money too thin across low-converting hours or locations. Instead of increasing spend, you should follow a smart budgeting guide to narrow your focus and dominate high-intent searches.
Step 1: Audit Your 'Junk' Impression Share
Before you try to increase your share, you need to cut the fat. Are you winning impressions on keywords that don't convert? If you’re running a local service business in Fortitude Valley, why are you bidding on broad terms that attract researchers from Perth?
If you are feeding the algorithm poor data, your impression share is a liability. Much like how audience targeting can lead AI astray if it is too broad, a high impression share on the wrong terms just drains your bank account faster.
Step 2: Fix Your 'Lost IS (Rank)' Without Increasing Bids
If you’re losing share due to Rank, don’t just throw more money at the bid. That’s what Google wants you to do. Instead, look at your Ad Assets.
Google rewards ads that take up more real estate and provide a better user experience. By failing to use ad assets effectively, you are effectively lowering your Ad Rank. High-quality site links, callouts, and structured snippets improve your CTR, which in turn improves your Quality Score. A higher Quality Score allows you to win more impressions while actually paying less per click than your competitors.
Step 3: Use Impression Share for Competitive Conquesting
There is one area where high impression share is a strategic weapon: Brand Protection and Competitor Conquesting.
If a competitor is bidding on your business name, you should aim for a Search Top Impression Share of 95%+. This is defensive. Conversely, if you are winning rival clicks, you don't need 90% share. You only need enough to siphoning off their highest-value leads.
Step 4: The 'Inverse' Optimisation Strategy
Instead of trying to 'fix' lost impression share, use the data to identify where to stop spending.
1. Segment by Time of Day: If your conversion rate at 2:00 AM is 0%, but your impression share is 90%, you are wasting money. Use ad scheduling to kill your impression share during those hours. 2. Segment by Device: Are you winning 80% of impressions on Tablet but only 20% on Mobile? If Mobile converts 3x better, stop worrying about the 'lost' share on Tablet and shift that budget to where the money is. 3. Check the 'Top' vs 'Absolute Top': Being at the very top (Absolute Top) is often 2-3x more expensive than being in the second or third spot. If your ROI is higher in position two, intentionally 'lose' impression share for the top spot to maximize your total lead volume.
The Final Verdict
Stop treating Impression Share as a goal. It is a diagnostic tool. A 60% impression share on a high-converting, high-intent keyword is worth ten times more than a 99% share on a generic 'catch-all' term.
If your agency is bragging about 'visibility' while your cost-per-lead is climbing, they are managing for their reports, not your bottom line. Focus on winning the auctions that matter and have the courage to lose the ones that don't.
Ready to stop wasting your Google Ads budget on vanity metrics? At Local Marketing Group, we focus on the only metric that actually keeps the lights on: Profit. Contact us today for a brutal, honest audit of your current campaigns.