What changed with Google Ads since 2020?

I used to spend around $2,000–$3,000/month on Google Ads for my consulting business and the ROAS was insane. Same niche, same core services, same types of keywords and locations I’m targeting today.

Eventually I got comfortable and stopped reinvesting in ads. It didn’t hurt immediately. I probably had another two years of runway from recurring clients and new business coming through SEO.

About five months ago I finally switched Google Ads back on.

The result: basically zero... I acquired less than 3 new customers.

Demand for the service is still there. The keywords that used to generate business still have search volume. I’m targeting essentially the same markets.

I also wasted about two months with AI Max enabled before realizing a significant amount of the budget was going toward completely unrelated search terms. I turned that off and tightened everything up, but performance is still nowhere remotely close to what I remember.

So for people who have been actively running Search campaigns from 2020 through today: what fundamentally changed?

Did keyword matching become much looser? Is manual Search simply less effective now without enough conversion data for Smart Bidding? Are there settings/features that are basically mandatory today that didn’t exist back then?

I feel like I’ve returned to Google Ads after five years and I’m playing a completely different game with an interface that just happens to look familiar.

Curious to hear from people who actually managed accounts throughout the entire transition.