What's The Deal With The Google Ads Optimisation Score?

In the realm of digital advertising, Google Ads reigns supreme as one of the most powerful platforms for reaching your target audience.

 As a Google Ads user, you might have come across the term "Optimization score" while navigating through your account settings.

What is the optimization score?

Google defines the Optimization score as an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform, with a scale ranging from 0% to 100%. While achieving a score of 100% may seem like a guaranteed path to success, the truth is that this score does not guarantee optimal results for your campaigns.

In my experience, I have encountered numerous campaigns boasting impressive scores of 90% or higher, only to witness disappointing outcomes. Conversely, campaigns with scores below 50% have yielded exceptional results. This discrepancy begs the question: What exactly does the Optimization score measure, and how should we interpret it?

How does Google Ads calculate optimization score?

The optimization score is calculated based on a few factors, such as the quality of your keywords, ad relevance, landing page experience and other technical elements. To put it simply, Google Ads evaluates your current settings and estimates how well they are likely to perform when compared to best practices.

Is the optimization score accurate?

The Optimization score is not a definitive measure of success, it only serves as an indicator of potential performance and should be used in combination with other metrics, such as clicks, conversions and cost per conversion, to get meaningful insights into the success of your campaigns.

At its core, the optimization score serves as an automated grading system that calculates your account's performance based on your acceptance or rejection of Google's recommendations. Reaching a perfect score is not an arduous task and can be accomplished within minutes, making it a rather subjective metric.

Should you accept all recommendations to improve your score?

One of the main limitations of the Google Ads optimization score lies in its reliance on a predefined set of prompts and reminders. For instance, if you are running a search campaign, Google may suggest running different types of ad assets. However, these recommendations are generic and fail to consider the unique nature of your business.

Let's say Google advises adding Call Extensions to your campaign, but your objective does not involve generating phone calls. In such a scenario, including Call Extensions would be counterproductive to your campaign goals. Similarly, if you are running Performance Max or Shopping campaigns, Google might recommend including all of your products. However, you may have specific reasons for not wanting to market all your products on Google Ads.

It is crucial to remember that Google Ads recommendations do not account for the individualized strategies and goals you or your agency have implemented while setting up your campaigns. Before blindly accepting any recommendations, take a step back and critically analyze why your account has been structured in a particular way.

Steps to improve the optimization score

As we just discussed, Google's optimization score is more of a tailored recommendation system rather than a hard-and-fast rule, and you should use common sense to judge the validity of recommendations for your particular case. With that said, there are still steps you could take to raise the score. 

Here's a quick rundown.

1. Implement Google's Recommendations (the ones that make sense): Google Ads platform provides a recommendations tab. This is your first stop to increasing your optimization score. These recommendations are generated based on the historical data and performance of your ads and could include anything from keyword suggestions to budget adjustments. Implement as many of these as make sense for your business goals. However, remember to evaluate each recommendation critically - not every suggestion may align perfectly with your unique strategy.
2. Keyword Optimization: Ensure your keywords are highly relevant to your ad group's theme. This increases the Quality Score of your ads, which in turn improves your ad rank and potentially reduces cost per click (CPC). Regularly adding negative keywords is also important. This prevents your ad from showing on irrelevant searches, preserving your budget and maintaining a high click-through rate (CTR).
3. Use Ad Extensions: Ad extensions provide additional information and clickable links in your ads that can make your ad more attractive and informative, which can lead to higher CTRs. Types of ad extensions include location, call, site link, and callout extensions. Google rewards ads that use extensions with a better rank and lower CPC.
4. Smart Bidding Strategies: These are AI-powered bidding strategies that optimize for conversions or conversion value. Examples include Enhanced CPC (ECPC), Target CPA, and Target ROAS. Implementing these can take some of the guesswork out of setting bids.

Applying and dismissing recommendations

To Apply Recommendations:

Once you've decided to implement a recommendation, click on the 'View' button next to the recommendation. Here, you'll find a detailed breakdown of the changes Google suggests. If you agree with these changes, click the 'Apply' button. Some recommendations can be applied all at once, while others might need to be applied one at a time.

After applying a recommendation, monitor your campaign performance closely. Google's predictions aren't always perfectly accurate, and you might find that some recommendations don't yield the expected results. If this happens, don't hesitate to revert the changes and try a different approach.

To Dismiss Irrelevant Recommendations:

If you come across recommendations that do not align with your business strategy or goals, you can choose to dismiss them. Simply click on the 'Dismiss' button next to the recommendation. If you dismiss a recommendation by accident, you can recover it by clicking on the 'History' tab at the top of the 'Recommendations' page and then selecting 'Dismissed'.

What's the difference between optimization score and quality score?

The terms "Optimization Score" and "Quality Score" are both key metrics within Google's advertising platform, Google Ads. However, they measure different aspects of your campaigns and serve distinct purposes. Here's a breakdown of the two:

Optimization Score

This score estimates how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. It's a dynamic metric that ranges from 0% to 100%, with 100% indicating that your account is perfectly optimized according to Google's recommendations. The optimization score takes into account a variety of factors including bidding and budget, keywords, ad relevance, and target audience among others. Recommendations to improve your score are provided within Google Ads platform, but it's important to remember these are machine-generated recommendations and should be considered alongside your specific business goals.

Quality Score

The Quality Score is an evaluation of the overall quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. It is used to determine your cost per click (CPC) and multiplied by your maximum bid to decide your ad rank in the ad auction process. Quality Score depends on three key factors: your click-through rate (CTR), the relevance of each keyword to its ad group, and the quality and relevance of your ad and its landing page. Scores are assigned on a scale from 1 to 10, where a higher score can lead to lower costs and better ad positions.

In short, while your Optimization Score is a holistic assessment of how well your campaign is set to achieve its objectives based on Google's best practices, your Quality Score is a specific measure of the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Both are important to monitor for successful Google Ads campaign management.

Next Steps

To provide you with practical guidance on navigating through the optimization score and its accompanying recommendations, I have created a video presentation. In this video, I will walk you through which recommendations to consider and which ones to disregard. By watching my YouTube video below, you will gain valuable insights into optimizing your Google Ads campaigns effectively.