Google Ads Auto Applied Recommendations... Yes or No?

If you've been running Google Ads for any period of time, no doubt you would have received some different recommendations from Google Ads about the changes that you need to make or the changes that Google recommends that you make or add to your Google Ads campaigns. Now these recommendations could have come in the form of a direct email or phone call from a Google Ads rep, or it could have also been from the Google Ads Dashboard. But what I want to talk about today is those automatically applied recommendations. Now these are the ones that you can opt into. And what I want to make really, really clear here is that you need to be really careful with the automatically applied recommendations that you choose to enable in your Google Ads campaigns. Because once you've enabled these or opted in to these automatically applied recommendations, like the name suggests, they will be automatically applied. I know, crazy. So the reason you do need to be really, really careful with the ones that you accept is because once you've accepted it, Google will go through and make those changes automatically. So what I want to do in this video is I wanted to actually take you through a bit of an extended screen share to really show you which automatically applied recommendations that I use. But I'll also talk you through and give you some background and whether I personally recommend whether you should be using those automatically applied recommendations. But firstly, if you're new here, my name is Aaron Young and I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. And what I also do want to help you with, yes, you can use these automatically applied recommendations and there are some that I use. But another great way of making sure that you're optimizing your Google Ads campaigns correctly is to have a really clear strategy on what you need to be optimizing in your Google Ads account every single time you open up your Google Ads Dashboard. So to help you with that, I want to give you access to my Google Ads Optimization checklists. And I run these for both search campaigns which are great for service based providers. And also I do have some checklists for e commerce businesses which are great for those shopping and performance max campaigns. And if you want to get access to my Google Ads Optimization checklist, so you know exactly what you need to be optimizing in your Google Ads account. Plus know when you need to complete those actions. Whether it's every week, every month, or every 90 days, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. But right now let's jump into an extended screen share so that I can take you through the different Types of automatically applied recommendations and whether you should be using them. All right, so we're in Google Ads. Now if you want to see these automatically applied recommendation options, the first thing you need to make sure that you're looking at all of your campaigns. So this next step, if you go into one of these campaigns, you won't see this option. So firstly just make sure you've clicked on View all campaigns, then from there go to Recommendations. And then when you're in Recommendations, you need to go to auto apply. So let me just show you here that if you're in one of these campaigns, you won't see that auto apply option. So make sure you go into view all campaigns and then go to the auto apply section. Now there's two main things that you've got in through here. It'll be around about maintaining your ads and growing your business. At the moment there's about 25 different options. Once again, this will change all of the time. So what you need just need to go through is go through and let's firstly go through maintaining your ads. And there's nine different. So the first thing is around about your ads and assets. Now in this campaign, because I'm using only performance max and shopping campaigns, I'm not going to worry about these ones. But for these ones in here, generally most accounts, especially if you set up that search a campaign or done any new ads in the last year, which you should have been, they're all going to be on responsive search ads and they will generally see this recommendation to improve your responsive search ads. Now, I don't select this one and that's because for me personally, I go through and run manual split tests of my responsive search ads for every 30 days. So I don't use that one. And that's also another reason why I don't use the optimized ad rotation. Now, when it comes to using your optimized ad rotation, what that means is that you can either force Google to, if you've got two ads in a different ad group, to basically go through those two ad groups. So for every 200 impressions, it'll use each ad 100 times. But I actually do generally use optimized ad rotation. And the reason for that is because, as I said, I do use manual split tests of ads, but I don't want to be caught in the situation where there's an ad which has got, say for example, a 10% better conversion rate and it's giving me conversions at a $10 less acquisition cost if that's the Case I want to give Google the power to automatically just focus on that top performing ad. So of the ads and assets, I generally only use one of these three. Now when it comes to keywords and targeting, I don't expand it out into Google search partners. The reason for that is that Google has the vast majority of the search traffic, in some cases up to 97%. And I've just never found any traction or any benefit of adding in smaller search partners like aol. And you just don't get as much data. So that's why I don't use them. I do also allow them to remove redundant keywords. The reason for that is that if there's any keywords in my account which hasn't triggered any impressions for say 30 or 60 or 90 days, Google will remove these same as the non serving keywords. It's pretty much the same. But that's what I do allow. Now in regards to removing the conflicting negative keywords. Now what a reflecting negative keyword is is that if you've got a negative keyword which is matching a keyword that you're targeting, so let's just say you're targeting mobile dog grooming service, you might have a negative keyword which is stopping that from being appeared. I don't turn this on. The reason for that is because especially with the keyword match types, I do want to be really, really careful on what search terms are triggering my ads. So I still manage that manually and optimize targeting. This is also not only for search terms, but also your display terms. And this is giving Google power to go beyond your. I don't accept this at the moment. And the reason for that is because in my ad group setup, especially for search campaigns, I always have a couple of broad match phrases. So I generally find that that's giving me more than enough new search terms. I don't select that. Now in terms of your upgrading your conversion tracking, this is something I'm going through at the moment. So yes, I do recommend to use that latest version of the conversion tracking. Now let's move on to the other recommendations which is about growing your business. Now for this one about adding new keywords and adding broad match keywords, I don't accept these. And the reason for that is because Google will give me the recommendation anyway and that allows me to then go through it and just double check it and make sure that these are keyword themes that are relevant for my business. The reason why I don't have this as an auto applied option is because Google will be pulling data from my business niche but my products or services may be different to some of my competitors. So I want to still have that control over being able to add in the new keywords and I, I don't want to give Google that power yet. And display expansion, similar concept but obviously just for display ads. I have tested this previously. Generally I've found at the moment still that I like to be able to select the different audiences and demographics that I want to target my display ads to. That display expansion, you could have it on. That's more of a preference for me now when it comes to the bidding. This is one thing that I do not give Google power on. And the reason for that is because there are some seasonal differences or there could be some pricing differences, just different things that Google may not be aware of because it's happening personally in our business. So I always want to be able to have control over the bidding. The other thing that I have found with this is that when you do give Google this power is that sometimes it doesn't work in with your budget so you can accept it. But my strong recommendation would be to not give Google the power to set your own CPAs or set your own Target rolluses To date and recording this in June of 2023 I've seen better results through making our own decisions with setting up a bidding strategy. So all of keep them turned off and then this brings us to the last one which is the ad store visits as an account default goal. I've got this turned off in this account because we don't have any stores. But this is something I do recommend if that you do have some physical stores. The benefit of this especially if you're wanting to really give some extra value points. So you may have someone that interacts with your ad, they don't buy online but then they go see one of your stores. That is a metric that you do want to know. So if I'm running an e commerce or service based industry and they have an office that they do want to promote, I will add that in. So there you have it. That's my view on which of the automatically applied recommendations I do opt into for my Google Ads accounts right now. Now closely related to this subject is Google's automatically created assets. And Google has now made a very recent announcement that they're going to be rolling this out more and more especially to search ads. And if you want to find out more about this very very important update that I do recommend you watch especially if you're running search ads I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Thank you for joining me and see you in this video right now. See ya.