A new café on Google, before it had a website

Where it started

Ola Coffee & Brunch opened on Bushbury Lane in Wolverhampton on 6 October 2026. The owners asked us to put the café in front of local people on Google.

There was no website yet, so the adverts had to send people somewhere else. The café’s Google listing already had the menu, the opening hours, the phone number and directions, so that is where they go. Before anything was set up, we looked at what people around here search for when they want a coffee or a brunch, what a café’s budget could sensibly cover, and Google’s rules for advertising a business that has no website. Then we wrote a plan.

What we set up

On 12 October 2026 we built the campaign in the café’s own Google Ads account. The café owns the account and pays Google directly, so everything the account learns stays with the café.

It is one Performance Max campaign. That is Google’s type of campaign that runs one set of adverts across Search, Maps, YouTube and other places, and learns where they work. Anyone who taps an advert lands on the café’s Google listing. The adverts were shown within 5 miles of the café, using Google’s Presence setting, which means people who are in the area or regularly there, rather than people who have only shown an interest in it.

We wrote the adverts ourselves: 15 headlines, 5 long headlines, 5 descriptions, and four short extras: Specialty Coffee, Independent Cafe, Walk-ins Welcome and On Bushbury Lane. The café’s phone number went on as a call button. Then we switched off the settings that let Google rewrite the text, send people to other pages or change the images, so the adverts only say what the café can stand behind. TV screens were left out as well.

We gave Google 24 search themes, the coffee, breakfast and brunch searches we wanted it to aim at. We also added 163 negative keywords on the first day. Negative keywords are words you tell Google never to show your advert for, and they kept the adverts off searches that had nothing to do with a café.

The first four images were crops of Tommy’s poster for the café, edited and finished by Tommy. On 14 October we added the café’s own photos, and that filled every image slot Google offers.

What the adverts did

The adverts were first shown on 13 October, once Google had reviewed them. On 27 October we read the whole account, without changing anything, and wrote it up in an 11 page audit. From 12 to 27 October 2026, which is 15 days of adverts:

• The adverts were shown 13,162 times and clicked 1,021 times. That is a click rate of 7.76%, nearly 8 in every 100 showings, at about £0.10 a click.
• Google charged £104.81 for the adverts. That is Google’s ad cost, before Google’s own fees and VAT.
• Google recorded 148 taps on Directions to the café, an average of £0.71 of ad spend each. It also recorded 7 taps to call the café and 118 views of the menu on its Google listing.
• Google Maps brought 90 of the direction taps, for £21.17, about £0.24 each. Google Search brought 53, for £67.94, about £1.28 each.
• 300 of the 415 clicks from Search came from “near me” searches. The top search was “cafe near me”, with 69 clicks for £7.87. Breakfast and brunch searches brought 94 clicks for £7.61.
• The headline Google showed most was “Brunch in Wolverhampton”: 4,764 times shown and 552 clicks.

A direction tap is Google’s record that someone tapped for directions to the café. Google cannot see who then walked through the door, so these are taps, not visits or customers, and we do not count them as anything more.

What we changed on 27 October

Until 27 October the campaign’s goal was still phone calls, so Google’s bidding was not aiming at direction taps at all. Changing that was the first thing on the list.

The same evening we made these changes. The adverts now run only around the café’s opening hours. The goals aim at taps for directions and calls, so Google’s bidding works towards what matters for a café. Outside apps and websites are set to 0% of the budget. And the lines calling the café new have been replaced with fresh wording, now that it has been open a few weeks.

What comes next

These changes are too new to have any results yet, so none are claimed here. We take a first look around 11 November 2026 and do a full four week review in the week of 25 November. When we have those figures, they go on this page with their dates.

Nobody can promise a café a number of customers from Google. What we can promise is the work, done properly, and a plain report of what it did.