STATUS: TAKING AUDIT AND MANAGED ACCOUNT ENQUIRIES · 25 YEARS · NOT GOOGLE'S PARTNER — YOURS

Drop that zero.
Get with the hero.

— “Cool as Ice”

“An unsung hero of the Australian search industry.” — Barry Smyth, Founder, Search Marketing Summit Australia

25 years inside Google Ads: the independent specialist top agencies hire in private, and Google would rather you never met. Forensic, fixed-fee audits that find the budget your account is quietly burning, and ongoing management run to the same standard.

I don't work for Google. I work against the defaults Google profits from. No PDF generators, no junior account managers, no soft metrics.

Request your audit, from $2,950 Managed accounts, from $990 / month See the track record
01 / ROSTER

What do these brands have in common? Me.

// Worked on directly or through agency partners since 1999.

OptusINGBlueScopePricelineVirgin MobileAIASwinburne UniversityRinnaiDomainRedBalloonAnsellSkyBusOngaDriveLavalifeRSVPRoses OnlyAQIS

Managing today Trades and home services, appliance repair, flooring, dental, veterinary, physiotherapy, funeral services, garden retail and industrial pumps, across Sydney, Melbourne and regional Victoria. Small business accounts run with the same discipline as the $5M ones.

// The full 25-year roster

Enterprise · Media · Finance

  • ING Bank
  • BHP
  • Fairfax — MyCareer, Domain, Drive
  • Virgin Mobile
  • Optus
  • Wizard Home Loans
  • AIA Insurance
  • A.Q.I.S
  • OurBrisbane
  • CFO-ONE
  • Finance Advocates
  • Debit Success (AU/NZ)

Retail · E-commerce · Lifestyle

  • Priceline Pharmacy
  • EMI / Virgin Music
  • Cadbury
  • Roses Only
  • RedBalloon
  • Sussan
  • Ansell
  • Lavalife
  • RSVP
  • Bulk Powders AU
  • Apaiser
  • Hello Chookie
  • Big Al Bikes
  • Coffex Coffee
  • Discount Trader
  • Done Dirt Cheap DVD

Industrial · Trades · Emergency

  • Onga Pumps
  • Rinnai / Brivis
  • B&R Storage Systems
  • Imperial Cartons
  • CMC Steel Solutions
  • Coldstream Timber
  • Robot Building
  • Pack & Move Boxes
  • ELR Plumbing
  • Same Day Hot Water
  • Locksmiths (Emergency)
  • Touchwood Kitchens
  • Rosemount Kitchens
  • Melbourne Landscaping & Projects
  • Melbourne Adv Paint
  • NB Custom Builds
  • Taskforce
  • Renovator Store

Professional · Health · Services

  • SkyBus
  • Infiniti Telco
  • Simply Headsets
  • Network Video
  • Savi Communications
  • SMCT
  • CMUE
  • Lauriston Girls School
  • Swinburne University
  • Kinetic Super
  • Business Mediation Australia
  • Family Mediators Australia
  • Wise Advisory
  • Light Mind Counselling
  • Piccolo PR
  • Social Exposure
  • Merhi Group
02 / TRACK RECORD

Firsts the rest of the industry is still catching up to.

1,000,000 keywords
Lavalife · taken off Google Canada — their #1 account

The biggest keyword campaign Google had ever seen — one million terms across the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. The standing record was eBay at 300,000. I won Lavalife away from Google Canada as their single largest account, brought percentage-based media pricing to the market for the first time, and ran it at a $5M spend. Overnight, the rebuild doubled traffic and halved cost per conversion.

$5M SPEND  ·  5 COUNTRIES  ·  BEAT EBAY'S 300K RECORD  ·  TRAFFIC ×2  ·  COST/CONV ÷2
8 countries
AQIS · “Quarantine Matters” · 2003

The first paid-search campaign ever run for the Australian Government — the Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service — warning inbound travellers about Australia's strict quarantine laws across 8 countries and 5 languages, at a $500K spend. Before most of the industry had a login.

RedBalloon
keyword-level feedback

Built keyword-level conversion feedback for RedBalloon — performance read and optimised down to the individual keyword, years before the platform made it standard.

03 / DIAGNOSIS

The unvarnished truth about your account.

Most commercial Google Ads accounts are bleeding money through structural decay — quietly, every single day. Here's what I find when I open the hood. Every flag below is read from the raw value in the account, not inferred from a dashboard.

AUDIT_READOUT · SAMPLE FINDINGS ● ISSUES DETECTED
CRITICAL

A micro-conversion set as the Primary goal

A page view or a 3-second call counted as a conversion. Smart Bidding optimises to that signal — so the algorithm chases noise and starves your real leads.

CRITICAL

Performance Max cannibalising brand search and hiding spend

PMax claims credit for branded traffic that would have converted anyway, bleeds budget into Display and video dressed up as conversions, and gives you almost no search-term control. Google's favourite black box.

FLAGGED

Auto-Applied Recommendations adding broad match keywords you never picked

Left on by default, AAR quietly injects its own broad match terms — widening a controlled, exact/phrase account into open-auction spend. Most managers never check the toggle.

FLAGGED

Spend leaking outside the serviceable area

Location settings set to “presence or interest” — paying for clicks from people who will never buy, in suburbs you don't service.

If your CPCs are climbing, your agency keeps saying "trust the algorithm," or your conversion data doesn't match your bottom line — that's the signature of an account running on Google's defaults. I'll show you exactly where, in writing.
04 / THE STANCE

I'm not Google's partner.
I'm yours.

Google's automations were never built for your return. They're built for Google's. Every default, every “recommendation,” every nudge toward broad match and AI-powered everything points the same direction — more of your budget into the auction.

The AI features they keep pushing don't owe you ROI. They owe Google margin. I treat every one as guilty until your data proves otherwise.

My job is to hold the line on the controls Google would rather you hand over — match types, negatives, bidding signals, geography — and keep your money pointed at commercial intent instead of platform liquidity.

A “Google Partner” badge certifies an agency is good for Google. My only certification is your ROI.

GOOGLE PARTNER ANTI-PARTNER · CERTIFIED INDEPENDENT SINCE 1999
On the record · video

"An unsung hero of the Australian search industry."

Barry Smyth — Founder, Search Marketing Summit Australia
▶
PLAY TESTIMONIAL
05 / THE WORK

Three ways to work with me.

Fixed fee · one-time

Performance & Guardrail Audit

Under $15k / month$2,950
$15k – $50k / month$4,950
$50k+ / monthCustom
FLAT FEE, BY AD SPEND · NO RETAINER · 5-DAY TURNAROUND

A forensic, manual review of your live account. Not a generated PDF: the real values, read field by field, with the leaks ranked by severity and the fixes spelled out. Every managed account starts here, and the audit fee is credited against your first quarter of management.

  • Auto-Applied Recommendations & match-type integrity check
  • Conversion tracking & primary-goal verification
  • Negative keyword hygiene & out-of-area spend audit
  • Bid strategy & signal-quality review
  • Ranked findings (Critical → Resolved) in a written report
Request the audit
Ongoing · monthly

Managed Google Ads

Under $5k / month$990
$5k to $15k / month$1,490
$15k to $50k / month$2,490
$50k+ / monthCustom
PER MONTH, BY AD SPEND · 3 MONTH MINIMUM, THEN MONTH TO MONTH

Every managed account starts with the audit, and the audit fee comes off your first quarter. After that the account is run the way it was audited: strict phrase and exact match, negatives swept weekly, location and bidding guardrails held, conversion tracking checked every month.

  • Weekly search-term sweep & negative keyword updates
  • Match-type, location & bidding guardrails held; Google's auto-applied changes switched off and kept off
  • Conversion tracking verified monthly, fixed when it breaks
  • Monthly report in plain English: spend, leads, cost per lead, what changed, what's next
  • Direct line to me. No account managers in between
  • Limited to 20 managed accounts at any time
Request a management quote
Ongoing · for agencies & in-house teams

Advisory & White Label

By brief
RETAINER · FOR BRANDS & AGENCY PARTNERS

Hands-on guidance for an in-house team, or white-label firepower for an agency that needs its hardest accounts and tracking architecture handled properly.

  • Account rebuilds & strict Phrase/Exact architecture
  • Conversion & tracking setup (GTM, GA4, server-side)
  • Match-type, bidding & budget isolation strategy
  • Cross-channel — Meta & LinkedIn acquisition
  • Direct line to me — no account managers in between
Start a conversation
06 / VALIDATION

What the veterans say.

“We have worked with Matt for years to audit, optimise and manage Google Ads campaigns for our clients. He has an exceptional ability to identify where budget is being wasted, where opportunities are being missed and what changes will have the greatest impact. His strategic recommendations consistently improve campaign performance and regularly exceed our expectations. I value his honesty, trust his judgement and confidently recommend him to clients who want better results from their advertising investment.”

Gavin Sloan
Director, SLOAN Media · agency partner

“I’ve been working with Matt since 2006. We’ve collaborated on major national accounts like Priceline Pharmacy, SkyBus and Swinburne Professional, and he remains the most skilled paid-search practitioner I’ve met. Analytically rigorous, strategically sound, and never too busy to talk through the detail. What sets him apart is his generosity: he brings clients along on the thinking rather than keeping expertise locked away. Rare and valuable.”

Liz Doherty
Founder, The Brand Therapist

“Matt is a practitioner of rare calibre — someone who not only delivers on expectations but routinely exceeds them, with a diligence and precision that is increasingly uncommon. His optimisation efforts have directly contributed to sustained increases in client revenue, and his ability to consistently deliver strong return on investment has been a defining feature of his contribution. His involvement with TopRankings has been instrumental to the growth of both our organisation and our brand presence in the Australian marketplace. I have no hesitation in recommending him.”

Noam Judah
Founder, TopRankings & Digital Rescue · 7-year reference
07 / CREDENTIALS

The technical spec.

Core specialties

Google Ads (SEM / PPC)
Strict Phrase/Exact architectures, advanced negative keyword hygiene, location & bidding isolation.
Tracking architecture
GTM, GA4, conversion integrity and server-side setups that report the truth.
Cross-channel acquisition
Meta Ads (Facebook / Instagram) and LinkedIn Ads.
Organic & conversion
Technical SEO since 2002, CRO, usability and site design.

Continuous advanced training

  • SMX — Search Marketing Expo
    Attended 10 times in 12 years
  • Brad Geddes — Certified Knowledge
    Advanced AdWords Training
    2013–14
  • Frederick Vallaeys — Optmyzr
    Advanced algorithmic & platform training
    2015–18
  • In Google Ads continuously
    Since it launched in Australia
    2002
Matt Belcher
08 / WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH

Matt Belcher

I've been an online marketer since 1999, and inside Google Ads since the day it launched in Australia in 2002. For most of that time I worked white-label, the operator agencies bring in when an account actually has to perform. I've built for the Australian Government, run $5M global accounts, and rebuilt portfolios across trades, retail, finance and emergency services. Today I run a portfolio of Australian small business accounts, from appliance repair to dental, and audit the accounts other agencies have left on Google's defaults.

Sixteen of those years were freelance, which bought me the one thing this industry never gives you: time. I spent a good part of it studying esoteric yoga and meditation — and I teach meditation in Chiang Mai, where I work from. The discipline that sits still long enough to read a breath is the same one that reads an account clean: patience, attention, and refusing to be fooled by noise.

I manage accounts the way an auditor reads them: every month is a fresh audit, and the report tells you where the money went, what Google's defaults would have cost you, and what changed. Independent. Direct. No account managers in between.

09 / Request an audit or a management quote

Stop guessing. Get the account read properly.

Tell me about the account. I review every enquiry personally and reply within two business days. I take on a limited number of managed accounts, so the form helps us both work out fit quickly.

AUDIT · $2,950 TO $4,950 BY SPEND · MANAGEMENT · FROM $990 / MONTH

I review every enquiry personally and reply within two business days.