How long should I give a Google Ads agency before judging results?

Setup should take days, not weeks: access, feed, tracking, and campaigns live within the first four days or so. Weeks one and two are data collection, and they look slow on purpose, because Google needs its first 10 to 30 sales before bidding settles. From week three the account pushes toward 50 conversions, which is where we switch Target ROAS on, because below that the algorithm has too little data to hit a target reliably.

Meaningful traction usually shows by month two or three. That is the earliest point where the results themselves are a fair basis for judgment, because before it you are mostly watching the algorithm pay its tuition.

Daily swings are normal and expected, so never grade an agency on one quiet day or even one soft week inside the learning window. The honest read is a multi-day trend, excluding today, because conversions keep registering after the day ends and today's number is always incomplete.

One fair warning about impatience: panic changes are expensive. Every major edit resets the learning phase, so a store owner who demands big weekly pivots is forcing the account to start over on a loop and then judging the agency for the restarts.

Process needs no waiting period. From week one you should see: setup moving on schedule, a weekly update that arrives without you chasing it, and, whenever results dip, a reason plus a next step rather than a shrug. An agency that goes quiet in month one will not get louder in month four.

And if month three arrives with no upward trend, no clear explanation, and no changed plan, that is your answer, and no lock-in should be holding you there. There is a separate answer on this site covering how to switch agencies without losing the performance you have built.