PPC Tools: The Free Google Kit That Runs Most Small Accounts, Then the Paid Tools and Call Tracking Worth Adding

The free kit, mapped to the jobs it does

Every tool below costs nothing beyond the ads themselves, and every one comes from Google, so its numbers are Google's own rather than a vendor's estimate. Start here. Buy something only when one of these runs out of road, which for an account spending a few thousand dollars a month may be never.

If you also want the free tools for organic search, free SEO tools covers that side, and the Google Ads section explains the auction these tools are trying to win.

Google Ads Editor, the free tool most owners never download

Google describes Ads Editor as a no-cost, downloadable application for managing campaigns offline and making bulk changes. You download the account to your computer, edit it like a spreadsheet, and nothing happens on Google until you post. If you manage several accounts, Google says Editor stores them all for viewing and editing. It runs on Windows and Mac, and Google's product page lists search and replace, moving items between campaigns, and undo and redo across many campaigns at once.

Those features matter on the jobs the web interface makes tedious: adding the same thirty negative keywords to every campaign, changing a final URL across forty ad groups after a site rebuild, copying a proven campaign into a new town and swapping the town name. In the browser that is an afternoon of clicking. In Editor it is a find and replace and a review.

1. 1

   Download the account fresh

   Always get recent changes before editing, so you are not working on last week's copy and overwriting someone else's work.

2. 2

   Make the bulk change

   Select the campaigns, ad groups or keywords, then edit them together. Keep one kind of change per session so it is easy to check.

3. 3

   Check the changes

   Google says you can view your edits in draft before posting them. Read the list; a wrong final URL caught here is a wasted week avoided.

4. 4

   Post, then look in the browser

   Post the changes and open the account in a browser to confirm a sample of them landed as intended.

Research and rivals: Keyword Planner and the Transparency Center

Two free tools answer the questions every account starts with: what do people in our area search, and what are competitors saying to them? Both have full guides of their own, so this is only the short version.

• Keyword Planner shows average monthly searches, a low and high top of page bid range and forecasts for a list of keywords. Google's help page on using Keyword Planner says you must complete account setup by entering billing information. Our Keyword Planner guide shows how to get in without running ads and how to read the ranges.
• Google's Ads Transparency Center is a public archive of ads from verified advertisers, searchable by business name or website and filterable by region, date and format. It shows the ad text and where it ran; it does not show keywords, bids or budgets. Seeing competitor ads gives the full tour, including auction insights inside your own account.
• Ad Preview and Diagnosis belongs in the same kit. Google's help page says it shows how your ad appears in results and why it might not be appearing, while avoiding the impressions you add by searching for your own ad on Google.

Paid research suites estimate what these tools leave out, and keyword research tools and competitor analysis tools compare them. For a local account, Google's own numbers usually settle the question first.

After the click: GA4, Search Console and Tag Manager

Google Ads reports the click. What the visitor did next lives elsewhere, and three free tools carry that answer back into the account where bidding can use it.

The paid and organic report is the cheapest SEO and ads meeting you will ever hold. Searches where you rank first organically and still pay for every click are worth testing; searches where you pay and do not rank at all are a list of pages to build. Our guide to SEO vs PPC covers that trade, and Google Search Console covers the setup on the organic side.

Planner and scripts: the tools hidden behind the Tools menu

Two more free tools sit inside every account, and most small advertisers never find them.

Performance Planner forecasts how changes to budgets and bids might affect results. Google's help page lists the bar for Search and Performance Max campaigns: at least 3 clicks, 10 impressions and one conversion, spend in the last 17 days, and no bid strategy change in the last 10. Forecasts refresh daily from the last 7 to 10 days of data, adjusted for seasonality. Since March 9, 2026 it no longer plans Display or Video campaigns. Use it before a busy season, not as a promise.

Google Ads scripts are small JavaScript programs that run on Google's servers. Google's scripts documentation says they run at no additional cost, need only entry-level JavaScript, and can be scheduled hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. Useful jobs for a small account: an email when spend jumps, a daily check for broken landing pages, a weekly search terms export to a Google Sheet. Paste code from strangers only after someone who reads JavaScript has read it, because a script can change bids as easily as it can report them.

The most expensive PPC tool is the free one nobody opened while the budget leaked.

Paid PPC tools, what each adds, prices as of October 2026

Paid tools sell three things the free kit does less of: automated audits that spot waste, workflow for people managing many accounts, and outside estimates of competitors' paid search. Prices below come from each vendor's own pricing page in October 2026; several hide figures behind a spend slider, and we say so rather than guess.

Treat competitor spend and keyword figures in any of these as estimates built from searches each vendor monitors, which are thinnest for small local advertisers. The optimizers are only as good as the conversions they read: an audit tool pointed at an account that counts page views will recommend more page views. That makes call and form tracking the purchase that comes before every other tool.

Call tracking, the tool that tells you whether the rest worked

For most local businesses the phone is the conversion. If calls are not counted, Smart Bidding and every optimizer above are steering by clicks. Google's own call tracking is free and good enough for many accounts; third-party platforms add forms, recordings and reporting across every channel.

A Google forwarding number is a unique number from Google that tracks calls from your ads and passes them to your business line; Google lists 30 countries where it works, the United States among them. Google's call details include start time, duration, caller area code, whether the call was answered and, for most calls over 15 seconds, the caller's number. For calls from your website, Google says it places dynamically generated forwarding numbers on your site without any cost to you, and counts a call as a conversion when it lasts longer than a minimum length you set.

Two platforms publish clear prices. CallRail starts at $50 a month for Lead Tracking with five local numbers, 250 minutes and 25 texts, with extra local numbers at $3 and a 14-day trial. WhatConverts starts at $30 a month for call tracking; its $60 Plus plan adds forms, chat and the Google Ads integration, also with a 14-day trial. Recording calls brings consent laws that differ by state, and DataCram is not a law firm, so ask counsel before switching recording on. Our conversion tracking setup service installs either route, and tracking problems lists the usual breaks.

Which stack fits which account

Tools do not read search terms on Monday morning, write the negative list, rebuild the landing page or answer the phone. Those jobs are where accounts leak, and the seven biggest sources of Google Ads waste is a self-audit for them. Before buying anything, make sure the basics in keyword match types and how much Google Ads costs are settled.

If you would rather someone else run the kit, DataCram's PPC management runs Google Ads on buying searches, with call and form tracking live before a dollar is spent and the first custom landing page built and included when a program starts. The minimum ad budget is $1,000 a month, billed by Google to your own account, and management is quoted after a free audit, month to month, with no long contract. PPC advertising shows how campaigns are built, and the Google Ads problems page maps symptoms to causes.