Google Ads Optimization score - do you need a 100%?

Google Ads conveniently publishes an optimization score within every account. The goal is to indicate how well an account is optimized (hence the name - optimization score). It’s unfortunately not a yardstick for how effective your account is. 

A Google Ads account with a high optimization score can miss its goals and an account with a low score can exceed its marketing goals.

Example of the opti-score dashboard:

What type of recommendations are provided through the opti-score dashboard?

Example #1: Increase your daily budget

You’ll receive a higher score when you increase your daily budget as the system determines that you’ll get more clicks & conversions with a higher budget. Of course, this isn’t always possible for many advertisers as the current budget set is the one which the business has available for Google Ads.

Example #2: Turn on search partners

Turning on Google Search partners allows your ads to serve on other affiliated search engines. In South Africa that would be the likes of Gumtree, parked domains or other directories.

I think you’ll agree that traffic from these types of areas are not the same as google.co.za or google.com. I therefore advise clients to turn off search partners in most cases.

Example #3: Turn on display expansion

This setting will show your ads on the display network which spans over 2 million websites. That is vastly different from showing your ads on a search engine and the results will be too. From my testing, it's a format better suited for re-marketing or awareness rather than a lead generation campaign type. This setting is better turned off for many advertisers and tested separately from search campaigns.

How to use the optimization score dashboard

The best use case I can recommend for it is an idea generator for a PPC manager or specialist to use when optimizing an account and not as a barometer for how well an account is performing.

When should you apply opti-score recommendations?

The short answer is, when it makes sense for your account goals and on a case by case basis. 

What are the category types of suggestions for the optimization score?

Briefly, these suggestions fall in one of the buckets below:

Fixes or disapprovals

These are usually sitelinks or other ad extensions with 404 errors or any other type of issue that would prevent serving. (useful).

Expanded targeting

Increasing your targeting settings, adding new keywords, uploading customer lists or turning on display settings. (use case by case).

Improve assets

Adding images, logos or improving responsive search ads. (useful).

AI essentials or other automated settings

Test these changes out first before auto applying.