If you manage Google Ads campaigns, you’re probably as sick as I am of the constant calls and emails from a Google Ads representative urging you to make changes to your accounts to ‘improve your optimisation score’.
The suggestions usually involve you being directed to the ‘Recommendations’ tab, where you’ll be encouraged to increase your budget for better visibility, switch to broad match keywords to capture more searches, or whack on a load of auto-apply features to streamline managing the account.
Should you trust this advice? The short answer is usually, no.
While some recommendations are worth a second look, more often than not, Google reps are not acting in your best interest, or that of your clients.
Reps are salespeople, not strategists
One of the most important things to understand about Google Ads representatives is that their primary role is commercial, not consultative. Many reps are hired through third-party companies rather than directly by Google, and their training is built around a single overriding goal: making Google even more money.
The LinkedIn profiles of Google Ads reps reveal telling language such as “I work to hit aggressive quarterly revenue goals”, “I manage over X amount of ad spend across X number of clients”, and “I work closely with clients to find opportunities for increasing budgets.”
That does not mean every rep is acting in bad faith. There are undoubtedly knowledgeable individuals within Google’s teams who genuinely want to help advertisers succeed. But even the most well-intentioned rep operates within an incentive structure that pulls toward higher spend to benefit Google, rather than a better return on investment for you.
The recommendations are not actually personalised
There is a common misconception that when a rep or the platform suggests a change to your account, it is based on a detailed understanding of your business. In most cases, it is not.
Google’s recommendations are AI-generated. Machine learning algorithms analyse large volumes of data and cross-reference it against industry trends, user behaviour, and historical performance to suggest ways to improve campaign performance. AI does not have access to any context about your business goals, and it doesn’t care what they are as long as you keep spending. The recommendations it produces are generic guidance dressed up as personalised advice.
The optimisation score, the percentage figure Google uses to indicate how well your campaigns are performing and how much room there is for improvement, is not always accurate at an individual level. It is generated by AI based on data collected from millions of campaigns, and does not take into account your specific business needs, goals, or nuances.
Chasing a high optimisation score is therefore a poor strategy. What matters is performance against your actual KPIs, not a number that reflects how closely your account aligns with Google’s preferred settings.
The recommendations you should probably ignore
Budget increases
One of the most common recommendations you’ll be given is to increase your budget. The Google rep may tell you that by upping your daily spend you will drive more clicks or conversions. While it is true that more budget could lead to more traffic, it does not mean it is always the right move. More money does not always equal better results, and without careful strategy, increasing your budget could lead to wasted spend on irrelevant clicks or underperforming ads.
PPC expert, Brad Geddes, reviewed 50 budget optimisation recommendations and found that every single one would have caused a significant drop in return on ad spend or doubled cost-per-acquisition. In some cases, CPAs would have been ten times higher.
Switching to broad match keywords
Broad match is perhaps the recommendation that causes the most damage when applied without thought. Switching all of your keywords to broad match sounds appealing in theory, because it reaches a wider audience, but the reality is far messier.
Google will push you to change all of your keywords to broad match, and while some may work, many will not. If Google does not understand your business well, it can lead to poor-quality traffic or leads. Without a robust negative keyword list to accompany it, broad match can quickly drain budgets on searches that have nothing to do with what you are selling.
Exact match keywords haven’t technically meant exact for a long time now, so expanding to broad match is just likely to waste budget. Looking at the Search Terms report on a Performance Max campaign without well-structured audience signals and a lot of negative keywords will provide you with some insight into the sort of garbage queries your ad will be eligible to show for if you implement this recommendation.
Changing your bid strategy
Reps will often recommend upgrading your bid strategy without considering what your actual business goals are. Automated bidding strategies like Target CPA or Maximise Conversions can perform well in certain situations, but they require a well-structured account, sufficient conversion data, and a clear strategic rationale before they will deliver results. If you have a smaller budget or a low number of conversions, switching to one of their proposed bid strategies can push CPC through the roof – and still not deliver any results.
Turning on display expansion
The display network allows your ads to appear on millions of websites across the web. Although this wide reach can be beneficial for building brand recognition, it often fails to produce high-quality leads due to its less targeted nature, leading to lower conversion rates and higher costs.
Auto-applied recommendations
Perhaps the most important thing to know is that Google has the ability to apply its own recommendations automatically, without you reviewing them at all. Google Ads reps are usually really pushy, trying to convince you it’s a good idea to turn this on.
You can turn this off by signing into your Google Ads account, clicking the Campaigns icon, navigating to Recommendations, clicking Auto-Apply in the top right corner, unchecking the recommendations you want to turn off, and saving. If you have not done this already, it should be the first thing you check!
When reps go further than they should
There are documented cases of reps overstepping the boundaries of their role in ways that go beyond pushy recommendations.
There is evidence of Google reps bypassing agencies and contacting clients directly, potentially undermining the relationship between an agency and its client. The head of Google’s Ads Liaison has publicly discussed such issues and acknowledged wrongdoing. In any large global organisation, you will encounter these issues, but it is worrying that reps are jeopardising real relationships in a bid to improve their own goals.
For businesses working with a paid search agency or freelancer, this is worth being aware of. If you receive direct contact from a Google rep, it is worth looping in your agency before agreeing to anything or making any changes.
Are there recommendations worth acting on?
Yes, but they tend to be the more administrative ones rather than the strategic sweeping changes that reps most often push.
Recommendations around conflicting negative keywords are always worth examining. These occur when one of your negative keywords is blocking one of your regular keywords from showing, and they can quietly suppress performance without you realising. Similarly, recommendations to address disapproved ads or extensions are straightforward and worth acting on: if an ad is disapproved, it is not showing, and fixing it is simply good account hygiene.
Recommendations to make your headlines and descriptions more unique are also worth reviewing. They often signal that an ad group has too many similar headlines and lacks variety in calls to action, unique selling points, or benefit statements, and adding that variety can improve both click-through and conversion rates.
The pattern here is that the most useful recommendations tend to be those that flag something you may have missed, such as a conflict, a disapproval, or a gap in your ad assets, rather than those that push you toward spending more or ceding more control to automation.
Experimenting with recommendations
If you do want to test a recommendation rather than dismiss it outright, the right approach is to treat it as an experiment with clear parameters. Define what success looks like before you make the change, run it for a statistically meaningful period, and make sure you have the budget to absorb a potential dip in performance during any learning phase.
If you are unsure about a recommendation, do not commit to it right away. Run a small-scale test to see how it impacts your campaign performance before fully implementing it. This is especially relevant for bidding strategy changes, which typically trigger a machine learning reset that can temporarily worsen results before any improvement becomes visible.
Experimenting is entirely reasonable if your budget allows for it and you have robust tracking in place to measure the outcome. The mistake is applying recommendations wholesale without that structure around them.
How to say no
Google Ads recommendations, whether they come from the platform itself or from a rep, are not neutral advice. They are generated or delivered within a system that has a commercial interest in your increased spending. That does not make them universally wrong, but it does mean you should evaluate every suggestion against your own goals, your own data, and your own understanding of your audience.
A well-defined campaign strategy is your best defence. It is easier to say no to Google representatives if you have a strategy in place that you are following. When they are trying to push you to accept their recommendations, the right question is not “should I do this because Google is suggesting it?” but “does this serve the specific outcomes I am trying to achieve?”
And most of the time, the answer will be no.