Paused Search Ads, Shifted to PMax—Revenue Tanked, Any Tips?

Hi everyone,

I run a family-owned restaurant, and we've been heavily relying on Google Ads for our marketing. Up until about a month ago, we were running both Search campaigns and Performance Max (PMax). PMax was delivering conversions at 5-10x lower costs than Search campaigns, so we made the decision to pause all Search campaigns and reallocate that budget entirely to PMax.

However, I’ve noticed that our overall revenue seems to have dropped since making this switch. There are several factors at play—our business is in Prague, so seasonality affects tourist traffic, and we had a temporary block on our Google My Business page for a week, which hurt visibility. There was also a flood about a month ago that caused a dip in tourist numbers, so we saw fewer visitors overall.

During the Google My Business block, we only had the Search campaign running, and while we didn't fill many tables, our presence on Google Maps was nonexistent, which I think discouraged potential customers from visiting us. Because of that, I’m unsure whether it’s fair to judge the effectiveness of Search campaigns based solely on that period.

Now, I’m hesitant to just "wait it out" and hope that PMax optimizes and starts performing better, especially with the uncertainty around how long that could take. I’ve heard that there's a beneficial connection between running both Search and PMax simultaneously for improved results. However, my PPC specialist claims that even if a customer first visits our site through Search and then later converts via Google Maps, Google Ads would still attribute the conversion to Search.

Has anyone else experimented with running both PMax and Search campaigns together? Have you tested the impact on in-store performance when one campaign type is paused? Also, any insights on how to balance the budget between the two would be appreciated. We’re working with a daily budget of around €100, and PPC is a big driver of our customer base.

Thanks in advance for any advice!