How to Close Google Ad

Deciding to close a Google Ads account is a significant step, whether you're shifting your marketing strategy, wrapping up a temporary project, or restructuring your business. This guide will walk you through the entire process, covering the essential prep work, the step-by-step cancellation instructions, and what to expect after your account is closed.

Before You Hit 'Cancel': A Quick Checklist

Closing your account is more than just clicking a button. A few minutes of preparation can save you hours of headaches down the road. Before you proceed, run through this quick checklist to make sure you've covered all your bases.

1. Pausing Campaigns vs. Permanently Closing the Account

First, be absolutely sure that closing the account is what you want to do. The main difference between pausing and closing is permanence.

• Pausing: This is temporary. You can pause individual campaigns, ad groups, or keywords at any time. When you pause, your ads stop running, and you stop getting charged for clicks. However, your account remains active. All your historical data, campaign structures, ad copy, and settings are preserved, ready for you to reactivate with a single click. Pausing is ideal if you're experiencing a seasonal dip, need to temporarily cut your budget, or want to rework your strategy without losing all your work.
• Closing: This is a more permanent action. When you close your account, all your ads stop running immediately. While you can usually reactivate a closed account later, it's a more definitive step. Closing is the right choice if you're shutting down the business, have created a brand new account to replace the old one, or are certain you won't be using this specific Google Ads account again.

If there's any chance you might want to restart your advertising efforts in the future, pausing is almost always the safer bet.

2. Download Your Performance Data (This is a Must!)

This is arguably the most critical step in the entire process. Once your account is closed, accessing detailed historical data can become difficult or impossible down the line. This data is incredibly valuable, it’s a record of what worked, what didn’t, how much you spent, and what you learned.

Before closing your account, export comprehensive reports. Don't leave this goldmine of insights behind. Make sure to download:

• Campaign Performance: Report on metrics like clicks, impressions, cost, conversions, and CPA for every campaign. Set the date range to "All time."
• Keyword Report: Gather all your keyword data, including match types, quality scores, and performance metrics. This can be invaluable if you ever launch a similar campaign.
• Ad Copy Performance: Export a full report of all your ad variations and their performance (click-through rates, conversion rates). Knowing your best-performing headlines and descriptions is priceless.
• Search Term Report: This shows the actual search queries that triggered your ads, giving you a real-world look into customer intent.
• Audience & Demographic Data: If you've been targeting specific audiences, save that performance data.

You can export these as CSV files or Google Sheets. Store them in a safe place like Google Drive or Dropbox. You might not need them tomorrow, but six months from now when a new project comes up, you'll be glad you have this data to benchmark against.

3. Review Your Billing and Any Remaining Balance

Before you close your account, check your current billing status. Go to "Billing" and then "Summary" to see if you have any outstanding balance that needs to be paid. Google will charge you for any accrued costs up until your ads stop serving.

Alternatively, if you're on a manual payment plan and have unused funds in your account, you will be eligible for a refund. Google automatically processes refunds for any prepaid balance. Knowing your financial picture upfront prevents any surprises later.

4. Check for Any Linked Accounts

Google Ads often integrates with other platforms in the Google ecosystem. An active link may be disrupted when you cancel your account.

Check for links to:

• Google Analytics: If your accounts are linked, you may lose the ability to see things like ad cost data directly in your Analytics reports or use Analytics-based audiences in new campaigns.
• Google Merchant Center: If you're running Shopping ads, your Merchant Center account is linked. Canceling could disrupt product feeds or reporting.
• YouTube: Linked YouTube channels are often used for video ad remarketing lists.

It's good practice to understand these connections beforehand so you can manage any potential data flow disruptions to your other marketing tools.

How to Close Your Google Ads Account: The Step-by-Step Guide

Once you've completed the pre-cancellation checklist, you're ready to proceed. The process itself is quite simple. Just follow these steps.

1. Sign In to Your Google Ads Account: Head over to ads.google.com and log in with your credentials.
2. Navigate to the 'Admin' Section: In the left-hand navigation menu, find and click on the Admin gear icon. This is your hub for all account-level settings.
3. Go to 'Account Settings': Under the "Admin" menu, you will see a column for "Account." Click on Account settings.
4. Find 'Account status': On the "Account settings" page, you'll see a section labeled "Account status." It will likely say "Your account is active." Click the small dropdown arrow next to it to expand the section.
5. Click 'Cancel my account': Upon expanding the "Account status" section, you'll see a blue hyperlink that says Cancel my account. Click it.
6. Review the Confirmation Pop-Up and Cancel: A new screen will pop up detailing what happens when you cancel your account. It will remind you about paying any outstanding balance, detail the refund process if you have credits, and give you the option to pause your campaigns instead. If you're certain you want to proceed, click the final Cancel Account button.

What if You Can't Find the 'Cancel' Button?

If you're running into trouble, it's usually for one of two reasons:

• Permission Levels: You need to have "Admin" access to the Google Ads account to cancel it. If you have "Standard" or "Read-only" access, you won't see the option. You'll need to contact the account administrator to either give you the required permissions or to cancel the account for you.
• Billing Isn't Set Up: If you created an account but never completed the billing setup, you might not have the option to formally "cancel." In this case, there's no payment information on file, and the account is essentially dormant, so no action is needed.

Okay, It's Canceled. Now What?

You've clicked the button and confirmed. Your Google Ads account is now officially canceled. Here’s a rundown of what to expect in the hours, days, and weeks that follow.

Your Ads Stop Showing Almost Immediately

The moment you finalize the cancellation, your active campaigns will be shut down. In most cases, ads stop serving within the hour, but Google says to allow up to 24 hours for the process to be fully complete across all their servers.

Receiving Your Final Bill or Refund

Google will issue a final bill for any outstanding advertising costs accumulated before your ads stopped. You'll typically receive this final invoice within 60 days of cancellation.

If you had a positive balance from a manual payment method, a refund will be processed automatically to the payment method on file. This is not instant - it can take a few weeks. Officially, Google states it may take up to 12 weeks to see the refund appear, so some patience is required.

Accessing Your Old Account

Your account isn't deleted from existence. You can still sign in at ads.google.com using your same credentials. This gives you read-only access to your historical performance data (which reinforces why downloading it beforehand is still a smart move in case this policy ever changes). You won't be able to create new campaigns or edit anything unless you reactivate the account.

Reactivating a Canceled Account

Made a mistake? Or has your business situation changed? The good news is that you can almost always reactivate a closed Google Ads account. When you log into your canceled account, you'll typically see a banner at the top of the page with a link to "Reactivate" your account. Clicking this and updating your billing details is usually all it takes to get things up and running again.

Final Thoughts

Closing a Google Ads account is a straightforward process, but preparing for it by downloading your data and understanding your billing situation is crucial. Remember to carefully consider whether pausing your campaigns might be a better, less permanent alternative for your needs, preserving your hard-won campaign settings and historical data for future use.

Manually preparing and exporting data from platforms before shutting them down highlights a common headache in marketing analytics. At Graphed , we help you avoid this by centralizing your information from tools like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Shopify into real-time, interactive dashboards. This ensures that you always have a unified view of your historical performance, without the fear of losing access or constantly downloading one-off reports.