Should I Apply Google Ads Recommendations? [Google Ads Tutorial]
In this tutorial Aaron Young, a self‑described 15,000‑hour Google Ads expert, explains why blindly applying every suggestion from the Google Ads Recommendations tab is a fast route to higher spend without more conversions. He argues that Google’s recommendations are designed to broaden reach, not necessarily to increase profit, and that success comes from focusing on long‑tail, high‑converting keywords and a disciplined campaign structure. Young walks through each recommendation category – Bidding & Budgets, Keywords & Targeting, Ads & Extensions, and Automated Campaigns – showing how to evaluate each suggestion, what red flags to watch for (e.g., large budget jumps, CPA targets worse than current performance, broad‑match upgrades), and when to dismiss or accept. He shares practical tactics such as incremental budget increases (≈20 % steps), only applying CPA targets within a 5‑10 % range, keeping exact/phrase match types, removing redundant keywords, and using manual image extensions over dynamic ones. Throughout, he emphasizes using the Recommendations tab as a safety net rather than an optimization schedule, recommending instead his own Google Ads Optimization Checklist (covering 72‑hour, weekly, monthly, and 90‑day tasks) and structured campaign setup videos. The video concludes with calls to action for the checklist and further training resources.
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Applying all of the recommendations that Google gives you in the Google Ads Recommendations tab is the fastest way for you to spend more money in Google without actually getting any extra conversions. And I often say that if you want to ruin the performance of any Google Ads account, just simply quickly and blindly apply all of the recommendations that Google gives you in the Google Ads Recommendations tab. Now, it's not that Google is giving you bad recommendations on purpose, it's more got to do with the fact that the recommendations that Google gives you in the Recommendations tab are designed to increase the reach of your campaign. And the issue is is that for many business owners and people who are running Google Ads campaigns, is that success and by success we mean profit in those Google Ads campaigns is found by focusing on longer tail niche keywords for your services or your products rather than those broad reaching high volume keywords. Let me give you a quick example for a Google Ads campaign that I've been running for my own business and since 2010 looks to focus on our boutique villa resort which is located in Seminyak, Bali. And we will often get recommendations in the Google Ads Recommendations tab telling us to add in new broad match keywords like Seminyak Villas, Seminyak Holidays or Bali Holidays because they are high volume keywords with lots of search numbers every single day. However, success with Google Ads for my business is more about focusing on the highly targeted keywords such as one bedroom, Seminyak Pool, villas. And year after year we have found that just focusing on these more specific highly targeted keywords gives us more than enough inquiries that we need to successfully run our own business. And it's like this, for any service or product you're marketing in Google Ads you will have your core high converting keywords. And from my experience I've found that this is around 50% of the total number of search terms that you could target for your total keyword theme. And then as we move out, you've then got some other similar keywords and then you've got some other related keywords. And Google looks at this target as this whole 100% as the market that you can be marketing your keywords for your products or your services. And this is the difference between what we need as the business owner and what Google looks to recommend. And the money spot for our business is these longer tail keywords like one bedroom, Seminyak Villas, Seminyak Private pool villas and boutique villa resorts in Bali. And then as we move further out, although they're related keywords like Seminyak Villas and Bali Holidays and Bali hotels just don't give us the same level of profit as these core money making keywords. And that's the issue with the recommendations that Google gives you in the Google Ads Recommendations tab is that they don't take into account the specific needs of your business. It purely looks at the current keywords that you're targeting in your campaign and how it can expand out to broader related and similar keyword them. So in this video, I'm going to take you through the different types of recommendations that Google will give you in the Google Ads Recommendations tab and then we'll discuss which ones you need to take notice of and which ones you can just simply dismiss and ignore. And just before we get into that training, in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads Master. And this is where I share all the strategies and knowledge that I've learned in how to create profitable campaigns for your business. And I've learned all these strategies by optimizing and creating successful Google Ads campaigns and since 2010. So if you find value in this teaching, could you do me a huge favor and not only like this video, but also subscribe to this channel so that I can share my knowledge with more and more people like you who are looking how to create profitable Google Ads campaigns? Thank you so much. Let's get into this teaching. When it comes to the Google Ads Recommendations tab, you do need to understand that it is actually tied to the optimization score that you'll see in your Google Ads dashboard. Now, why you can use this optimization score as a guide, I don't give it a lot of notice and the reason for that is that you can increase optimization score simply by dismissing some of the recommendations that Google gives you in the recommendations tab. So right at the start I do want to make it very clear that your optimization score has absolutely nothing to do with the number of conversions or the conversion rate of your campaign. So you can have Google Ads campaigns with an optimization score of 100% and they're generating absolutely zero leads and profit for your business, while at the same time you can have other campaigns that only have an optimization score of 40 or 45% and they are highly profitable and, and they are the campaigns which are building your business. So the first main point that I want to make clear is that the optimization score and the recommendations tab has very little to do with the two core things which are going to give you success in your Google Ads campaigns, which are the structure of your campaigns and the optimization schedule that you are using for your campaigns. And if you stick around to the end of this video, I will give you some tools that will help you not only with the structure of your campaign, but also with the optimization schedule that you need to be using on on every single Google Ads campaign. When it comes to the Google Ads Recommendations tab, it'll give you recommendations in the following areas. Bidding and budgets, keywords and targeting, ads and extensions, automated campaigns and repairs. With the main three that you need to focus on being bidding and budgets, ads and extensions, and keywords and targeting. But before we get to those big three, I do want to talk about the recommendation. And it'll only magnify the current results that you're seeing. So firstly, before you apply this recommendation, go through to the campaign and actually make sure that you're happy with the conversion metrics that you're seeing in that campaign. And then secondly, what I'd also be looking at is the level of the increase that Google is actually giving you. Now, in this case, you can actually see that Google is actually giving you a recommendation to more than double your account budget. Now, I don't recommend increasing your budget by more than 20% in one go. And the reason for that is because if we were to apply this recommendation, it would then throw our campaign back back into a learning phase. So we may accept that this campaign needs to go up to $95. But rather than doing it in one foul sleep, I'd be increasing this around about 20%. So 5 to $8, making sure we're happy with that and then coming back another four or five days later. And if we're happy with the initial results, we can then go through and add in that extra 20% up until we get to that $95 mark. And the second main type of recommendation you'll get in this bidding and budget section is to actually go about and change the CPA for your current campaign. And once again, I recommend before you go through and apply this, just click on the View recommendation. Now, with this one, you do need to be really, really careful because generally they won't only give you a new CPA target, but they'll also increase your budget. And by clicking Apply, you're not only accepting the CPA target, but you're also increasing the budget. And as you can see in this one, it's not only recommending the CPA to go up to $28, it's but it's also recommending that you increase your budget to $170 a day. Now when we go through and look at the actual campaign that this is for, you can actually see that our campaign budget here is actually only at $70. So that's the first thing you need to be careful of. And as we discussed previously, I wouldn't be going through and making such a drastic change in one click. The other thing that you do want to be going through and having a look at is looking at the current CPA that you've got in your account. So you can see in this one that we've actually been achieving a $27 CPA on the and when you go back into the recommendations, you can actually see that Google is giving you a recommendation that is actually higher than your current performance. So it's looking to implement a CPA, which is actually a worse CPA than what you've currently got in your own account. So for that reason, I would not be recommending this CPA target, and I generally only apply CPA Target if it's within a 5 to 10% range. In addition to upgrade your existing keywords to broad match. Now, I've spoken this at various times in my other campaigns in that this is something that I wouldn't recommend. I mainly stick into either phrase or exact match. And the other thing to remember with this is that since late 2001, your exact match keywords actually function more like a phrase match and your phrase match actually function more like a broad match. And this is because Google has actually changed the keyword targeting over to an intent or meaning base. So this is something that I would just straight away go through and dismiss. And when you do go through and do a dismiss, you can actually select a reason. But usually I just say that I don't think that this will improve my performance or I'll do it later. Now another one that you would generally see, and this is actually a good one, which is uploading your customer match lists. And this just lets you know that you can actually go through and upload a database to create a custom segment or a custom audience in your Google Ads accounts. Now, this is something I won't be going through in this video, but that is something that you can actually do when Google does give you the reminder because that is something that you can actually do right at the start of your account because you do need to actually have an active account for for a period of time and also meet some spending criteria. And now another couple that you'll see all the time is this expanding your reach to Google Search Partners and also using the display expansion. Now if You've seen any of my campaign step by step setup videos, you'll actually see that I do not recommend this. And the reason for this is that I don't like using Google search partners. I've just found that you never get the same level of data and also too you never actually get any further results with them. And then secondly, for the display expansion, my strong view on this is that if you want to be doing ads on the display network, is that you do not use a search campaign for them. So you don't use text ads, is that you actually use image ads which you designed and created specifically for that purpose. Now when it comes to recommending new audiences, I would always accept that, especially because these will be applied as an observation method. So the more and more data that we can get. So for these ones that is always a simple apply for me. And then finally when it comes to add new keywords, now I do look at these, but before I just go through and click Apply, I go through to view the recommendations. And generally what I'll do with here as well is that you do need to note that if you do add these is that they will straight away recommend them as a broad match keyword. Now for these two keywords, I actually think that they are worthwhile. However, I only want them to be added as an exact match. So I'll go through and change them as exact match and then click apply. And now another recommendation that you'll sometimes see in and around keywords and targeting is this about removing redundant keywords or non serving keywords. Now for removing the redundant keywords you can once again go through and have a look at the two recommendations. And a lot of time this can actually mean that you've got some keywords which are pretty much functioning in the same way. So for example, with this one, this Audio kids headphones and Kids audio headphones, the way that exact match keywords used to function is that you do need those two variations because with exact key match keywords you used to have to also get them in the correct order. But because that is now no longer the case, this other variation is now redundant. So we can actually apply that. And the same goes for baby earmuffs and earmuffs for babies is that Google will now trigger on both of these situations. So we can apply this recommendation now for this. This is purely something that's just not going to increase the performance of your account. It just means that when you go in to review your keywords, you're going to have one less keyword to look at so it can be a little bit easier to manage your account. And then finally, let's look at the recommendations for ads and extensions. Now, when it gets to ads and extensions, it'll either be about improving your current responsive search ads, adding in any extensions which you don't have active on your account, and then finally also adding in responsive search ads if you've still got some active expanded text ads in your account. Now, for adding in the extensions, especially for search campaigns, I'm a big believer in adding in as many extensions as possible. Now, for this individual campaign, we do have some image extensions active in other campaigns which we're currently doing as a split test. And I will be going through and adding these into the other campaigns which they're not currently active on. And then once we do that, we actually won't need these dynamic image extensions because we would have manually put them in. And with image extensions, where possible, I recommend that you add your own rather than using these dynamic image extensions. And that's purely because I just like to have some further control over which images are displayed within my campaign. Now, when it comes to improving your search ads, you should actually go through and view these recommendations. But rather than just going through and applying, do make sure that you're viewing to see what they're actually recommending. And you can see for this one straight away. I know that the reason why Google does not like this one is because I've pinned in some of these headlines and this is the little recommendation they're giving here, which is Bluetooth audio headphones. Now, I can actually add that in if I want to, but I'm not going to in this case. And the reason for that is that I know in this ad group I've actually got some active split testing happening. So with the Ads and Extensions tab, if you are running regular split testing, you don't need to pay attention to the recommendations in this section because you're doing manual testing to find out the best headlines and descriptions. They're going to work for your own campaign. So I hope you can see from that teaching that while you do need to pay attention to some of the recommendations that Google will give you in the Recommendations tab, it's not a matter of just simply applying every recommendation that Google gives you. So for the Recommendations tab, I do use it as a little bit of a resource just to make sure that there's nothing that I've missed in my Google Ads account. But ultimately I don't use it to drive my optimization schedule in my Google Ads accounts. And the reason for that is because I've seen far better results by using my Google Ads Optimization Checklist. Now this is a checklist that I put together which lets you know exactly what you need to optimize in your Google Ads account every 72 hours, every week, every month, and every 90 days. And it includes things like your split testing and how often you should be completing your split testing in your Google Ads account. And as I said in that teaching slide, that if you are regularly completing split testing for your ads, you don't need to pay attention to all of the recommendations that Google gives you when it comes to ads and extensions. So if you want to get your Google Ads Optimization checklist right now, all you need to do is follow the link in the description below. And you may remember that along with my Google Ads Optimization checklist, I also said that I'll give you some tools to help you with structuring your campaigns correctly. And if you want to learn the step by step process in how to structure and create Google search campaigns, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Or if you want to learn more about how to structure and set up shopping campaigns, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Once again, thank you for joining me and I look forward to seeing you on my next teaching video. See ya.
