Google Ads – opti score, recommendations and AAR – what is it, when and how to use them?

Optimizing your Google Ads account is crucial to ensure that your ads reach the right audience and generate the maximum return on investment (ROI). By optimizing your account, you can improve the relevance of your ads, increase click-through rates and ultimately increase conversions. In addition, optimizing your account can also help you reduce your ad spend by identifying and eliminating ineffective ads, groups of ads, or keywords. With increasing competition in Google Ads, having an optimized account can give you a competitive edge, making it easier for you to reach your target audience and achieve your advertising goals.

Why is Google Ads account optimization important?

In this article, we will discuss key tools that can help you optimize your Google Ads account. Ahead, we’ll discuss aspects such as your account and campaign optimization score and how to improve it using:

Google Ads recommendations,
automatic application of recommendations (AAR).

Account and campaign optimization result

Account optimization score is a metric that measures the overall „health” of a Google Ads account. The score ranges from 0% to 100%, with a higher score indicating a better degree of account optimization.

In calculating the account optimization percentage, the Google Ads algorithm takes into account factors such as ad relevance, landing page, click-through rate and the like.

Account optimization score can help you identify areas for improvement in your ad campaigns.

For example, if your account optimization percentage is low it may mean that you will need to improve the relevance of your ads or optimize your landing pages to improve the user experience.

Similar to your overall account optimization score, your Google Ads campaign optimization score is an assessment of the health of your individual campaigns. This score is calculated based on various performance metrics, such as click-through rate, conversion rate and ad relevance. In this case, the score is also shown as a percentage and ranges from 0 to 100, with 100 meaning that your campaign is fully optimized and (from a theoretical point of view) performing well.

Improving your campaign optimization score includes a number of best practices, such as:

Keyword selection: Optimize your keyword list by removing irrelevant keywords and adding new ones that are more relevant to your campaign goals. You can also tweak your keyword matching to reach a wider audience or define it more precisely. Google Ads will most often suggest us to use approximate matching – with it we can most easily increase the number of searches for our ads, but we must remember to control their relevance to them. This brings us to the next point on the list of best practices.
Precision of ads: Make sure your ads are highly relevant to the keywords they are assigned to. Use ad groups to organize your ads by topic and write ad texts that are consistent with the keywords used in that group.
Landing pages (landing pages): Landing pages can have a significant impact on the optimization outcome of your Google Ads campaign, as they are a critical part of the user experience. A well-designed landing page that is properly aligned with the ad and (in the case of a search campaign) its keywords, provides a seamless experience for the user, and can improve the optimization score, leading to higher ad rankings and lower cost-per-click. On the other hand, a poorly designed landing page that is not optimized for the user can negatively affect the optimization score and lead to lower ad rankings and thus higher costs per click and/or conversion. So make sure that the page loads quickly and that its content matches the ad.
Customer List Targeting: By uploading customer lists, you can target ads to people who have previously interacted with your business through Google-owned services. Using this feature, you can also target ads to audience segments similar to your uploaded customer lists to reach new potentially valuable customers. Use contact information provided by existing customers to display personalized and effective ads that speak directly to them.
Select a bidding strategy: Choosing the best bidding strategy depends on your campaign goals and budget If you want to focus on maximizing conversions or revenue, then a strategy of maximizing conversions, or their value may be best for you. If you want to focus on getting as many clicks as possible, then a click maximization strategy may be more appropriate. If you have a limited budget and want to control your costs, then a manual CPC strategy may be best. It’s worth carefully analyzing your choice here, as your choice of strategy will also affect the campaign recommendations you’ll receive for optimization at a later stage. However, if during the course of the campaign you realize that the chosen strategy does not bring the desired results – you can always change it at the campaign settings level.

It is important to keep in mind that the account or campaign optimization score is not a measure of the absolute performance of your account, but rather an indication of how well your account is set up to perform. You should use the optimization score as a guide to identify areas for improvement in your account, or campaign, always keeping your specific goals and metrics in mind when making optimization decisions.

To manipulate the account optimization score, we can use Google Ads recommendations manually, or take advantage of auto-apply recommendations (AAR).

Google Ads recommendations

Google Ads Recommendations are automated suggestions that can help you improve your ad campaigns with minimal input from you. These recommendations are based on machine learning algorithms that analyze your account performance and suggest changes that can improve your performance.

For example, Google Ads Recommendations may suggest adjusting bidding for specific keywords or changing ad texts to better match your target audience.

One of the key benefits of Google Ads recommendations is that they can save companies time and effort. By automating the optimization process, companies can spend less time managing ad campaigns and more time on other aspects of their business. Additionally, Google Ads Recommendations can help companies take advantage of new features and trends in online advertising, allowing them to stay ahead of the competition. The use of Recommendations also affects the aspect we will discuss below, which is the result of account and campaign optimization. Implementing, or ignoring, the recommendations in question allows us to manipulate the optimization score, as determined by Google, as the recommendations coincide closely with the aforementioned practices whose use affects the account optimization score. Examples of recommendations that we can find in the Google Ads panel are:

Add new keywords: Google Ads may recommend adding new keywords potentially relevant to your campaigns.
Add extensions: The system may recommend adding ad extensions to ads, such as sub-pages, explanations or images, to provide additional information to potential customers.
Stopping ineffective ads and/or keywords: it may suggest you stop ads, or remove keywords that are not performing well, to prevent budget burn

Automatic Application of Recommendations (AAR)

Automatic application of recommendations in Google Ads are suggestions from Google’s machine learning algorithms that help improve the performance of ad campaigns. These recommendations can range from adding new keywords to campaigns to adjusting bids or ad copy. Enabling the option to automatically apply the recommendations means that the recommended changes will be made on the fly. Still, you retain full control over your account and can monitor which recommendations from the queue will be displayed on a given day on the recommendations home page.

To use automatically applied recommendations to improve the optimization score of your Google Ads account, follow these steps:

Log in to your Google Ads account and click “Recommendations” in the left navigation menu.
View the autoapplication recommendations available for your account.
Determine which recommendations are relevant to your business goals and campaign objectives.
Choose whether you want to allow Google to apply them automatically.
Monitor the performance of your campaigns after implementing the recommendations and adjust your strategy if necessary.

By taking advantage of automatically applied recommendations, you can save time and effort in managing your Google Ads campaigns while improving your account optimization score and overall campaign performance. However, keep in mind that not all recommendations will match your business goals or may not be appropriate for your specific campaign. Therefore, it is important to carefully evaluate each recommendation and its potential impact on campaigns before applying them.

Is it better to implement recommendations manually or automatically?

When deciding whether it’s better to implement recommendations manually or allow them to be automated as much as possible, you need to consider many factors, such as the reach of your advertising campaigns, your budget and your goals.

For example, smaller companies with limited budgets may find that manually implementing recommendations in a Google Ads account is the most cost-effective way to optimize their campaigns, while larger companies may prefer to use AAR to automate more complex optimization tasks.

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Martyna Malepszy

She has been with Up&more since April 2021. On a day-to-day basis, she is primarily engaged in running and optimizing campaigns that encourage the installation of mobile applications, but not only.