The ‘Best Google Ads Agency’ Lists Are Ranking the Wrong Thing

I read the top two listicles ranking for “best google ads agency” before writing this. One of them ranks itself first, using a scoring methodology it wrote itself. The other’s own comparison table gives one agency a $1,000 per project minimum, then that same agency’s profile, three paragraphs down on the same page, says $5,000-plus. Neither page explains the gap, and neither tells a buyer how to check whether an agency’s claimed results are real once the contract is signed.

So this is not another ranking. It is a comparison of the agencies that actually show up across these lists, by what each one charges and who each one fits, plus the two checks that matter more than any star rating: who touches the account once it is signed, and how to verify what they did to it.

What should actually decide which Google Ads agency you hire?

Not the position on a ranked list. Three things decide whether a Google Ads agency is right for a given store: whether its pricing model fits the store’s spend, whether the person who pitched the account is the person who runs it, and whether the buyer can verify the results afterward instead of taking a slide deck’s word for it. A “best” list answers none of those three, which is exactly why the lists disagree with each other.

The agencies that show up on every ‘best’ list

Pulled from the agencies that recur across multiple published rankings, with the pricing each one has stated publicly.

Why do these rankings disagree with their own numbers?

Two concrete things, both found while reading these pages rather than taken from either agency’s own marketing. WebFX’s comparison table lists one agency, One Umbrella, at $1,000 per project, while that same agency’s profile on the same page states $5,000-plus. The page does not explain the discrepancy, and it is WebFX’s own scoring system that puts WebFX itself in the top position.

The other ranking’s top pick advertises more than $36 million in total client ad spend managed. That figure is self-reported on the agency’s own site, not audited by the person publishing the ranking, and it says nothing about the result on any individual account. None of this makes either agency bad. It means a ranking that scores or features itself, or repeats a number nobody checked, is marketing copy with a numbered list layout, not independent research.

How do you verify an agency’s results before you’re locked in?

Two checks, both doable before signing anything or in the first weeks after.

1. Ask for read-only access to the actual account during a trial period, not a quarterly recap deck. Google Ads has a dedicated read-only access level built for exactly this: it lets someone view campaigns, billing and performance reports without being able to change anything, which is the right level for a buyer who wants to watch before handing over edit access.
2. Once in, open the account’s change history rather than trusting a narrative of what was done. Google Ads keeps a two-year record of what changed, when, and who made the change, laid out on a timeline against the account’s own performance. It is the one place in the account that cannot be summarized away.

Both of those come straight from Google’s own documentation on account access levels and change history, not from either agency being evaluated. Any agency that resists giving read-only access during a trial is telling a buyer something worth hearing before the contract, not after it.

The condition that actually flips the answer

Monthly ad spend is the first filter, and it is a blunter one than most buyers expect. Under roughly $3,000 to $5,000 a month, every minimum fee on the table above, including mine, is likely to cost more than the media budget itself; running the account directly for a few months first is usually the better move. Above that and up to roughly $100,000 a month, an independent consultant or a small specialist shop is typically the best value, because the person pitching the account and the person running it are the same person.

The second filter is whether other channels need to move together. A store that also needs SEO, email and web work coordinated has a real reason to prefer a full-service shop over a single-channel specialist, even if the specialist would run Google Ads slightly better on its own, because the coordination cost is real money too. And industry changes the answer outright: a B2B SaaS account with a long sales cycle is a different problem than a Shopify store selling a $40 product, and the agencies built for one are usually the wrong hire for the other.

Where I am, and am not, the right call

I manage Google Ads for Shurhold, and over 24 months that account has run $112,278 in managed spend at a 3.6x blended return, with spend up 35 percent and revenue up 44 percent year over year. The full numbers are on the Shurhold case study.

I am the right call for a direct-to-consumer brand on Shopify spending roughly $5,000 to $100,000 a month that wants one person running Google Ads, Meta, Amazon or Microsoft, with published pricing and no percentage-of-spend fee. I am the wrong call for a B2B SaaS account, for a store that needs a full in-house-sized creative and web team bundled into the same contract, or for anything below the spend level where a single-channel specialist’s fee outweighs the ad budget it is managing. More on how the engagement actually runs is on the Google Ads consultant page, and the rest of what I write about Google Ads for ecommerce starts from the same place this post does: check the account, not the pitch.

Questions people ask