Google Ads assigns your account an optimization score. It’s easy to feel like you can do better when you see a 72% optimization score.

What you don’t want to do is blindly activate all of their recommendations to achieve a 100% optimization score. This is very different than a professional actually optimizing your Google Ads account. Don’t get me wrong there are some good recommendations mixed in. But without knowing what you’re doing could easily worsen a Google Ads account. When you make changes it’s important to monitor the performance over the next few weeks and compare to previous performance.

 

Here are some suggestions that I don’t agree with. Adding responsive search ads typically worsens performance.

 

 

 

 

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Turning on enhanced CPC probably won’t help either. In my experience manual CPC or maximize conversions perform better. Testing is required to see which setting works best for you. I’m not the only one warning about enhanced CPC. John of Ignite Visibility said “manual bidding is usually more effective”

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s the worst recommendation of all: upgrading to broad match. In my opinion you should have all match types in an ad group but quickly turn off broad match if it isn’t performing well and delivers a higher than ideal cost per conversion. Plus you are at risk of getting many extraneous searches like clients looking for competitors when you use broad match. Don’t get me wrong, broad match can and does work just not all of the time. And “upgrading” to just using broad match is a bad idea. Here’s one of our competitors that agrees with us on this point.

We all like the warm and fuzzy feeling of being told we have earned a 100%. But if it comes at the cost of de-optimizing your Google Ads account and costing you more money then it is not worth it. Beware as you follow the Google Ads recommendations.