The optimization score in Google ads measures how well you follow Google’s recommendations.

The optimization score is a metric that Google uses to calculate the effectiveness of your Google ads settings. Running from one to one hundred, it measures your campaign’s optimization across all the various components that make up a campaign, ad group, and keywords.

Alongside the optimization score, Google provides recommendations they believe will help your campaign’s performance. Following these recommendations increases your optimization score.

This blog post will discuss what factors contribute to optimization scores, how you can increase yours, and why blindly following Google’s recommendations isn’t always the best course of action.

About the optimization score

According to Google: “Optimization score is calculated in real-time, based on the statistics, settings, and the status of your account and campaigns, the relevant impact of available recommendations, and recent recommendations history.”

For partner status, Google ads agencies must maintain an optimization score above seventy.

In essence, the score measures how well your campaign will run based on their analysis. Considering the source of the recommendations for increasing your optimization score is critical because it provides insight into why blind faith in the advice isn’t wise.

Google makes money with ads

Advertisers pay money to show on the search engine’s results page. That’s how Google makes their money and provides information about their recommendations.

Let’s pay particular focus on bidding strategies. Here at Algorithmic Global, we’re big on manual bidding. We want complete control of the bids for the keywords, ad groups, and various audiences or location targets.

Google, on the other hand, wants control of the bids. So, the algorithm recommends switching to automated bidding strategies regularly. A sizable increase in the optimization score always accompanies this particular recommendation as an incentive for switching over.

Handling the recommendations

Advertisers have two courses of action available when dealing with Google’s recommendations: apply or dismiss.

The great part? Both actions result in the corresponding increase in the optimization score.

Maintaining a high optimization score is crucial for both advertisers keeping their partner status (as mentioned above, they need an optimization score above seventy) and ads managers who have clients looking at the accounts.

A client noticing a potential optimization score increase with an automated bidding strategy with a manager who uses manual bidding leads to difficult conversations and unnecessary questions.

Types of recommendations

As we’ve seen, applying or dismissing the recommendations increases your optimization score. While the previous example about bidding is something we dismiss every time at Algorithmic Global, there are a handful of others we also dismiss with regularity:

• automatic ad copy suggestions
• image extension suggestions
• budget suggestions

On the flip side, there are a handful we always look at and apply if necessary:

• redundant keyword suggestions
• new keyword suggestions
• responsive search ad suggestions

Answering the recommendation dismissal questions

Whenever someone dismisses a recommendation related to the optimization score, a pop-up appears asking why they took that particular course of action. There are about a dozen options, all dependent on the type of recommendation dismissed.

There’s an option at the bottom for continuing without justification, and this is the option we choose most of the time. There are a few exceptions:

• For the budget recommendations, we always fill in that we don’t have more budget.
• For bidding recommendations, we always say we prefer control over our bids (aka manual bidding)

The reason for this? We believe that, over time, these recommendations will show up less and less if successful advertisers disclose why they don’t follow these particular suggestions from Google.

Google ads with Algorithmic Global

Maintaining a high optimization score isn’t tricky or challenging—it comes down to managing Google’s recommendations for your account. Dismissing or applying the recommendations gets your score to 100% optimization score, keeping both Google and clients happy.

While some recommendations help with performance, you can dismiss most. Remember, take a close look at the few that are worthwhile and figure out if they will genuinely make your campaign better in the long run.

If you are interested in professional Google ads management, give Algorithmic Global a call or reach out via our contact page. We specialize in the disaster restoration industry but run ad campaigns in sectors as varied as book publishing to cannabis. So let’s figure out how we can work together!