Should You Pay Attention To Google Ad's Recommendations To Help Your Optimization Score?

By Jessie Hackett

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Have you ever looked at your Google AdWords account recommendations curiously wondering if their optimization objections will do what they say they will do? Us too! So we took a second to review some of our current recommendations and give you some wisdom and advice.

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What is an Optimization Score?

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Google defines its optimization scores as:

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“an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. Scores run from 0-100%, with 100% meaning that your account can perform at its full potential.”

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Therefore, you want to work as hard as possible to get your optimization score to 100%!

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This is debatable.

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Google’s Optimization Score increases or decreases in direct correlation to how many of Google’s recommendations you complete.

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Some of Google’s recommendations are worth 1-3%, and some even above 10%. You can find recommendations in the top left of your screen, below Overview.

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The follow is a list of Optimization Score recommendations with our realistic advice about them.

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Extensions of Any Kind

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A few examples of extensions include sitelink, image, or price extensions. Below is an image of a price extension recommendation from Google.

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Extension recommendations are great because they help increase your click-through rate. If you have the ability to disclose your pricing, do it. If you can add images to your image extensions, do it. We have seen a direct correlation between extensions and click-through rates or even conversion metrics. Below is an example of sitelink extensions.

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Improving Headlines & Descriptions

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Your ad strength is “the effectiveness of a relevant ad and highlights specific actions you can take to improve the strength of the ad”. Essentially, you want all of your headlines and descriptions to closely relate to the keywords you choose.

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This sheds light on the importance of separating your campaigns by product or service. For instance, if you run a women’s clothing store that sells women’s jeans and women’s blouses, you’ll be targeting keywords such as “women’s shirt” or “women’s jeans”. You’ll want two separate campaigns or ad groups because if someone who searches “women’s shirt” sees an ad that has headlines talking about “women’s jeans”, your click-through rate will be low.

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Expanding Your Reach Using Broad Keywords

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Google is constantly changing, and one of their big changes recently is the focus to Smart Bidding. This is the process of using machine learning to optimize for your desired objective in every auction. This means marketers are losing more and more control over things like bidding and keywords. The suggestion below is suggesting switching to broad match keywords to allow Google’s machine learning to optimize for you instead of using phrase match or exact match keywords.

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Use discretion when applying recommendations regarding Smart Bidding or broad match keywords. Broad match keywords allow Google the freedom to find the widest range of keywords that are similar to your keyword. This casts a wider net and can attract traffic that has little to no interest in your product.

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Getting More Conversions With Target ROAS

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This recommendation is very tricky to the naked eye.

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In this image, you can see that by setting a target ROAS at 176%, you’ll see an increase in conversion value (revenue) by $53.90. But you’ll have to spend $96.37 to get that increase in revenue. So.. .you’ll be netting -$42.47 by getting “more conversions”.

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