Google Ads Recommendations: Should You Apply Them All?

If you’re actively running Google Ads, then you’re likely familiar with Google’s “Recommendations” tab.

There are a lot of recommendations there, but should you apply them all?

Some are useful. Others may have major detrimental effects on campaign performance.

In this video, we break down which recommendations to watch out for.

Even if we don’t cover it in this video, Google Ads recommendations from the “Recommendations” tab should always be reviewed carefully before being applied!

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Video Transcription

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[Music]
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Hey this is Kelly one of the analysts
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here at Main Street ROI and we like to
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help small businesses with their digital
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marketing
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um
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one of those ways to achieve those goals
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is through Google ads so
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tip is about Google’s recommendations
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for your campaigns
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if your campaigns are struggling with
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wasted ad spend and higher cost per
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click then
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you should be able to save some money
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and reduce that wasted spend after
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watching this video
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so now we’re going to open up our our
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recommendations here with
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everything that Google likes to
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constantly bring up in the in the
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campaigns this is generally across the
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board for pretty pretty much every
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industry
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um so the first thing you’ll see is
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adding broad match keywords
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um we generally just do not recommend
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small businesses starting with broad
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match keywords there’s just a very small
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niche of businesses that may benefit
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from it and
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if you’ve been running campaigns for
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quite some time and you have a really
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extensive list of negative keywords then
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you might be okay to test broad match
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but generally we just really discourage
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it we can get much further with better
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results with exact match or phrase match
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so
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when you’re going in here the first
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thing you’ll see is to add broad match
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keywords
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um you know Google the ugly truth about
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Google’s recommendations and tips is
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that it it generally will lead to wasted
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spend because their their default
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settings are not in the advertiser’s
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best interest
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it’s really ultimately for Google to
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make more money and so yeah you know you
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kind of have to take these with a grain
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of salt and
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really consider how this might change
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your campaign performance so for this
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account
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it’s it’s basically telling us to add
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new keywords as broad match keywords we
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actually did an experiment in this
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account and the broad match keywords did
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not perform well at all we were getting
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a lot of spend so in this case you’ll
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want to just dismiss these
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recommendations and you can say
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see it wants to pop up and tell you to
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create an experiment but you’ll just say
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I don’t think this will improve my
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performance and just go ahead and
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dismiss all of those broad match
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recommendations
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raising your budgets like I said Google
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wants to make money so some of these
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recommendations are just really not in
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your best interest especially if you do
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not even have a larger budget just don’t
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worry about raising budgets you want to
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really maximize your your campaign
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results within you know your monthly cap
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and that way once you do get your
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conversions rolling in and you get some
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return on that investment that’s when
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you can increase your budgets I do not
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recommend increasing budgets if you’re
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testing new things or if you’re just
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starting out it’s always good to get
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some data rolling in so that you can
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figure out what works and what doesn’t
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so we’ll just dismiss that
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do it later we’ll add budget later
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now one of these things is relevant so
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the complete Advertiser verification
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that has its benefits Google has
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actually been prompting for a lot of
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accounts to complete verification or
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they’ll be paused so this is one of
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those recommendations
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that you’ll actually want to go ahead
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and carry out and get this verification
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process started for your company so you
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can add logos to new and existing search
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campaigns once you’ve done this and it
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kind of just adds a little bit of clout
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and and brand awareness along with the
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traffic that you’re getting to your
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landing pages people are also seeing
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your logo show up when there’s
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impressions for your ads so that has its
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benefits
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um but for now we’re not going to dive
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into that maybe there’ll be a video
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about that later but we can just go back
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to this and we’ll just dismiss this for
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now you can always return to your
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dismissed recommendations and find those
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later so
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we’ll just do that later and it will
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continue to prompt you for a lot of this
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stuff over and over
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so expanding your reach with Google
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search partners
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um we we don’t generally recommend doing
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this because with the data that we’ve
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seen rolling in over time it it it
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doesn’t produce the same amount of
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conversions as your general as your
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generic search campaign does
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when you’re on the search Network for
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Google it’s a lot more focused and when
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your ads are scattered across partner
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websites it’s like they’re not really
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actively looking for what you’re
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offering they’re just seeing your ad you
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know they just happen to be on a site
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with your ad showing up so those
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generally don’t produce the same results
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as the search Network well
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um so we like to just keep it mainly on
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the search Network in most cases
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so we can just say I don’t think this
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will improve my performance and dismiss
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that
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Now setting a Target CPA that may be
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something to consider it’s not
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necessarily something where Google is
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trying to get more money out of you per
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se and it does have its benefits of
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setting a cap on your
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Target cost per acquisition so that you
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can get you know conversions at a steady
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rate as far as like what it costs to
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actually get a lead form submission or a
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phone call whatever the conversion
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action might be for your business even
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if it’s a purchase you can set the
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target cost per action and
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you can achieve more conversions within
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that budget at that cap that you’ve set
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so that’s something that you might want
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to revisit just seeing what your
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historical data is or if you already
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have a number in mind for how much
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you’re wanting to pay uh per lead that
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you get or per purchase off of Google so
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you can always do that later
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we’ll just dismiss this
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um so of course adjusting your budgets
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it’s saying for us to increase the
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budget again on another campaign so
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we’ll dismiss that
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display expansion this is another one
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where it’s not as targeted as search
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campaigns on the on the search Network
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and when you when you use display
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expansion
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you know you have to add some imagery to
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your account you’ve got to upload some
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high resolution images and sometimes
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images just aren’t relevant for for some
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businesses on top of the display
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expansion generally not performing very
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well and more often than not we’re
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seeing wasted spend on the Display
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Network when we’ve used this feature for
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search campaigns so generally speaking
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we do not recommend this and maybe in
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some special cases it might be relevant
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but we’ll dismiss that
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um we don’t think that’ll improve our
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performance either
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so this is another recent rollout from
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Google is the lead forms on the ads
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directly attached to your ad and Google
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hosts this lead form
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that it may be it may may produce
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results for some clients it may actually
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hurt the conversion rates for some for
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others because
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what I’ve found is that these lead forms
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that show up with the ad
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on the Google search Network
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they they generally don’t generate high
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quality leads and
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even some of our clients that were
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testing this out I mean they were
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getting upwards of over 200 form
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submissions within a month on a
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remarketing campaign and so it just
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didn’t really quite make sense and then
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by exporting those leads and and looking
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at it and following up with them
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they they found that that it just they
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were not high quality they were not
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pre-qualified entries which is
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interesting so I I generally discourage
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um testing these lead form extensions
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that Google hosts
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so we’ll just say that’s not going to
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improve our performance either
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now redundant keywords that’s something
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to to uh take into consideration and if
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you review this and it seems to be on
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point
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um if we have
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different versions of these keywords now
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this one is saying to remove
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the bath fitters keyword and and I’m
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trying to understand
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see
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is this a broad match keyword in there
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so generally we have to go back in and
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double check what Google is suggesting
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that we do because this is saying to
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remove an exact match keyword and then
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replace it with a broad match keyword
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and this is where you really have to be
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careful about accepting the
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recommendations that that Google lists
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here
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um
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we can revisit this later because you’ll
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have to look at that and see what the
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data is for the broad match keyword
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versus the exact match keyword
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again broad match keywords
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they generally will produce irrelevant
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search traffic unless there’s a very
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Hefty negative keyword list or ad group
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level keywords in that account so we
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generally discourage that
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and then on the new
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Google ads mobile app so you can dismiss
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that as well obviously that’s not going
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to affect your campaign performance
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whether you’re on the app or not but if
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you notice here as we were dismissing
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these recommendations the optimization
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score went up to a hundred percent so
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this this is just a vanity metric this
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is not something that’s going to affect
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your campaign performance in fact it it
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just serves a purpose to let you know
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that there are things Google suggests
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that you change in your campaigns so if
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you just go back in and just dismiss all
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of them you’re right back up to a
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hundred percent so if your campaign
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optimization score is at 60 percent
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right now no worries it’s it’s not
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necessarily a failing campaign you can
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definitely get that back up to 100 just
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by dismissing the things that Google
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wants you to do
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but in close we have a lot of other
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helpful videos here at Main Street ROI
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and ultimately we just want to help you
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save money and actually get get results
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on Google
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um we’ve we’ve helped thousands of
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clients at this point uh improve their
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their results with Google ads and and
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set up their Google ads accounts for
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them so if you want to learn more about
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this we have a Google ads checklist that
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you can download absolutely free
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and I highly encourage you to look at
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that there’s just a lot of basic tips
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that that a lot of people Overlook and
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don’t think about so it can it could be
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really helpful for you
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um so yeah definitely get in touch with
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us if you need help with any of your
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digital marketing efforts we are glad to
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assist
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[Music]
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thank you
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[Music]