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The recommendations section of your Google Ads account is dedicated to helping you improve your campaigns. Recommendations can introduce you to new, relevant features and help you get more out of your budget by improving your bidding, keywords and ads. Recommendations evolve over time to align with the most up-to-date Google Ads best practices, increasing the overall performance and efficiency of your campaigns.
This article gives you an overview of the recommendations that you may receive and guidance on how to understand and apply them.
Before you begin
The recommendations that you receive are customised to be relevant and helpful to you. That means that you won't get every kind of recommendation, and sometimes you might not get any. If you don’t get recommendations for your account, be sure to check back again soon. Google Ads regularly discovers recommendations for you and regularly launches new recommendation types.
Recommendations for Google Ads manager accounts
In the new Google Ads experience, it's easier to use recommendations to help improve the accounts that you manage. Now, instead of signing in to each individual account that you manage, just sign in to your manager account and go to the Recommendations page to check the available recommendations across your managed accounts.
Types of recommendations
Ads and assets
'Ads and assets' recommendations help you refine your ads, create new ads, show your best ads most often and organise your ads into better ad groups. Assets recommendation types, in particular, help maximise the performance of your ads and can improve your ads’ click-through rates (CTR). You might notice these recommendations:
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- Add an ad group: Get more conversions at a similar CPA in your App campaigns by creating an additional ad group. Recommended because some of your App campaigns only have one ad group.
- Add assets to your responsive search ads: Help your responsive search ads perform optimally by adding headlines and descriptions from your text ads. Recommended because some of your responsive search ads are missing headlines or descriptions used in text ads in the same ad group.
- Add call assets to your ads: Make your ads more prominent and improve your CTR. Recommended because call assets can get your business more calls.
- Add callouts to your ads: Make your ads more prominent and improve your CTR. Recommended because callouts can improve your CTR.
- Add descriptions to your sitelinks: Make your ads prominent by using sitelink descriptions. Recommended because using sitelink descriptions can improve your CTR.
- Add dynamic image assets: Enhance your text ads with your landing page images by using dynamic image assets, which can improve your CTR. Recommended because dynamic image assets can improve your CTR.
- Add dynamic sitelink assets to your ads: Enhance your text ads with sitelinks related to your landing page using dynamic sitelink assets, which can improve your CTR. Recommended because you haven’t turned on dynamic sitelink assets.
- Add image assets to your ads: Your ads aren’t as prominent as they could be if you used image assets, which can improve your CTR. Recommended because image assets can improve your CTR.
- Add products to your videos: Get more conversions at a similar or lower CPA by adding a product feed to your video action campaigns. Recommended because you haven't opted into product feeds for your video action campaigns, and you have a linked Merchant Center account.
- Improve your Demand Gen: Get more conversions by adding assets to your Demand Gen ads. Recommended because some of your Demand Gen ads have an ad strength below 'Excellent'.
- Add lead form assets to your ads: Get more leads by showing lead form assets on your ads. Recommended because using lead form assets can drive more leads for your business.
- Add price assets to your ads: Make your ads more prominent and improve your CTR. Recommended because similar advertisers use price assets.
- Add responsive display ads: Get more conversions at a similar CPA with responsive display ads, which automatically adapt to fit available ad spaces. Create responsive display ads easily with automatically suggested assets. Recommended because your ad groups have enough conversion data to benefit from responsive display ads.
- Add responsive search ads: Show more relevant ads to potential customers by creating responsive search ads. Recommended because you have ad groups using only expanded text ads which can result in fewer clicks and conversions than ad groups with responsive search ads.
- Add sitelink assets to your ads: Make your ads more prominent and improve your CTR. Recommended because sitelinks can improve your CTR.
- Add structured snippet assets to your ads: Make your ads more prominent and improve your CTR. Recommended because structured snippets can improve your CTR.
- Add a video ad: Reach additional users for your app on YouTube, Google Play and in partner apps and mobile sites. Recommended because your App and Performance Max campaigns can drive additional traffic with a video ad.
- Add videos with different orientations: Improve your campaign’s performance and unlock new inventory by adding videos in different orientations. Recommended because your campaign doesn’t have a diverse mix of video orientations.
- Add location assets to your ads: Your ads aren't as prominent as they could be if you used location assets. Recommended because similar advertisers use location assets.
- Enable automatically created assets: Get more clicks on your responsive search ads by enabling automatically created assets for your search campaigns. Recommended because you have search campaigns that have not enabled automatically created assets.
- Fix disapproved Demand Gen campaign assets: Some of your assets aren't running because they don't meet Demand Gen ad requirements. Fix the disapproved assets to show them in your ads. Recommended because one or more of your assets don't meet Demand Gen ad requirements.
- Improve Apps ad strength: Get more conversions by adding assets to your app ad groups. Recommended because some of your App ad groups have an ad strength below 'Good'.
- Improve your responsive display ads: Get more conversions by adding assets to your responsive display ads. Recommended because some of your responsive display ads have an ad strength below 'Excellent'.
- Improve your responsive search ads: Get more clicks on your responsive search ads by improving your headlines and descriptions. Recommended because some of your responsive search ads have an ad strength below 'Good'.
- Merchant Integration recommendation: Attract more visits to your online store by adding it to Merchant Center (if your website is not powered by Shopify or Woo) or by linking Shopify or Woo to your Google Ads account.
- Use optimised ad rotation: Automatically show your best ads at auction time. Recommended because your current setting allows low-performing ads to run as often as high-performing ads.
- Audience gap recommendation: Identify potential customers who your ads currently don't target and receive guidance on what assets to include in your asset groups.
Automated campaigns
'Automated campaign' recommendations simplify campaign management and help maximise performance through automated bidding, targeting and ad creation. You might notice these recommendations:
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- Create a Performance Max campaign: Maximise performance across all Google channels with a single campaign. Recommended because this campaign type can help you maximise results for your goals while finding more converting customers across Google's available ad inventory.
- Create a Performance Max campaign that includes shop goals: Drive more visits and sales to your business locations with a Performance Max campaign that includes shop goals. Recommended because you qualify for shop visits or local actions bidding.
- Improve your Performance Max asset groups: Get more conversions by adding or improving assets in your Performance Max campaign. You can review the suggested assets and add them to your campaigns instantly. Recommended because some of your Performance Max asset groups have an ad strength below 'Excellent'.
- Target more products with Performance Max campaigns: Get more conversion value at a similar ROAS by targeting all products using Performance Max campaigns. Recommended because you have standard Shopping campaigns with active products that are not already targeted by Performance Max campaigns.
- Upgrade your campaigns with Dynamic Search Ads ad groups to Performance Max: Get more conversions by upgrading your Search campaigns with Dynamic Search Ads ad groups to Performance Max. Recommended because Search campaigns that use Dynamic Search Ads are eligible to be upgraded to Performance Max.
Bidding and budgets
'Bidding and budgets' recommendations can help you find the right bid strategy to meet your business goals and help ensure that your campaigns aren’t limited by budget.
Bidding and budget recommendations include impact estimates to help you understand how bidding and budget adjustments can grow your conversion and conversion values. These impact estimates reflect conversion delay estimates for search and Performance Max campaigns.
You might notice these recommendations:
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- Add shop visits in conversions: Meet your customers where they are by optimising for shop visits with Smart Bidding. Recommended because your campaigns are driving visits to your physical shops.
- Adjust your budgets: Get more conversions by adjusting your budgets in your Maximise conversions campaigns. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns could receive more conversions with a smaller relative increase in overall cost per acquisition (CPA).
- Adjust your CPA targets: Get more conversions by adjusting to your CPA targets. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns could receive more conversions with a smaller relative increase in targets.
- Adjust your ROAS targets: Get more conversion value by adjusting your ROAS targets. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns could receive more conversion value with a smaller relative decrease in targets.
- Bid more efficiently with Maximise clicks: Get more clicks at a similar cost with a fully automated bid strategy. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns may benefit from Maximise clicks bidding.
- Bid more efficiently with Maximise conversions: Get more conversions at a similar cost with a fully automated bid strategy. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns may benefit from Maximise conversions bidding.
- Bid more efficiently with Maximise conversion value: Get more conversion value at a similar cost with a fully automated bid strategy. Recommended because our simulations show your account is tracking conversions and can benefit from Maximise conversion value bidding.
- Bid more efficiently with target CPA: Get more conversions at a lower or similar CPA with a fully automated bid strategy. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns may benefit from Maximise conversions bidding.
- Bid more efficiently with Target impression share: Optimise for your ads' visibility with a fully automated bid strategy. Recommended because your campaigns have enough impressions to benefit from Target impression share.
- Bid more efficiently with target ROAS: Get more conversion value at a similar ROAS with a fully automated bid strategy. Recommended because our simulations show your campaigns are measuring two or more unique conversion values and are likely to benefit from Maximise conversion value using a target ROAS which can use data from all of your campaigns, including the conversion values that you are reporting to optimise performance.
- Include Firebase app conversion actions in 'account-level goals': Get more conversions by optimising for customers who are directed to your app from your ads. Recommended because you're tracking but not optimising for in-app conversions from ads that direct users to deep links.
- Move unused budgets: Your ads stopped running on your busiest days. Get more traffic by moving unused budget to the ads that need it most. Recommended because you missed out on 5% or more of your potential traffic last week.
- Raise your budgets: Keep your ads running on your busiest days by fixing your limited budget. Recommended because you missed out on 5% or more of your potential traffic last week.
- Raise your budgets for upcoming traffic increases: Your ads may stop running on your busiest days due to an expected future increase in traffic. Raise your budget now to avoid missing out on potential customers. Recommended because our simulations show you may miss out on 5% or more of your future weekly traffic at your current budget.
- Set a bidding strategy target: Use ROAS/CPA targets to control your campaign in the most efficient way. Recommended because your campaign has no target ROAS.
- Set a target CPA: Get more conversions at a similar CPA by setting a target and staying unconstrained by budget. Recommended because your campaign has no target CPA.
- Set a target CPA to capture upcoming traffic increases: You may miss out on conversions from an expected future traffic increase. Get these conversions at a similar CPA by setting a target and raising your budget. Recommended because our simulations show that traffic is expected to increase by 5% or more.
- Set a target ROAS to capture upcoming traffic increases: You may miss out on conversion value from an expected future traffic increase. Get this conversion value at a similar ROAS by setting a target and raising your budget. Recommended because our simulations show that traffic is expected to increase by 5% or more.
- Turn on auto-tagging: Measure the impact of your app and web campaigns by turning on auto-tagging to power conversion tracking. Recommended because you haven’t turned on auto-tagging, which would help you measure conversion actions on your apps and websites.
- Upgrade your conversion tracking with data-driven attribution: Give credit for conversions across multiple ad interactions with data-driven attribution. Recommended because your account has enough conversion data to benefit from data-driven attribution.
- Use a portfolio bid strategy with a shared budget: Maximise your ROI across your campaigns by using a portfolio strategy with a shared budget. Recommended because you’re using multiple campaign level or portfolio level strategies of the same type.
Keywords and targeting
'Keywords and targeting' recommendations can help you reach more people who are interested in what you offer. You might notice these recommendations:
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- Add brand restrictions and turn on broad match: This will convert your brand-focused campaigns' keywords to broad match and add suggested brands to your brand list. You'll restrict your Search campaign to only show ads on searches that match your broad match keywords and the specific brands in your brand list, including related products and services.
- Add broad match keywords: Get more conversions at a similar or better ROI by adding broad match versions of your existing keywords. Recommended because using broad match type keywords in these Smart bidding campaigns can help you effectively grow conversions within your performance targets.
- Add new keywords: Show your ads more often to people searching for what your business offers. Recommended because you're not targeting searches that could be relevant to your business.
- Create a custom audience: Get more conversions at a lower CPA by reaching users that search for you on Google properties. Recommended because you have campaigns that may benefit from custom audience segments.
- Create a new ad group for a broader audience: Broaden your audience by creating a new video ad group with only audience targeting. Recommended because you have ad groups with both audience and contextual targeting, which can limit your audience.
- Expand your reach with Google search partners: Reach additional customers at a lower CPC on YouTube and partner sites. Recommended because your Search Network ads can drive additional traffic with Google search partners.
- Expand your reach with Google video partners: Reach additional customers on partner sites and apps. Recommended because your Video ads can drive additional traffic with Google video partners.
- Reach new audiences: Get more conversions by showing your ads to additional likely customers. Recommended because we've identified audience segments that are likely to increase your conversions.
- Refresh your Customer Match lists: Show impactful and personalised ads to your recent customers by refreshing your existing Customer Match lists. Recommended because some of your ads are actively using Customer Match lists for observation, targeting or exclusions that haven't been updated for more than 90 days.
- Remove conflicting negative keywords: Your ads may not serve because of conflicting negative keywords. Remove them so your ads can show. Recommended because conflicting negative keywords are preventing some of your keywords from showing ads.
- Remove non-serving keywords: Make your account easier to manage by removing non-serving keywords. Recommended because some of your keywords haven't received any traffic for the past year or more.
- Remove redundant keywords: Make your account easier to manage by removing redundant keywords. Recommended because you have redundant keywords with the same ad group, destination and bidding strategy. The recommendation can include keywords across different match types.
- Set up audience sources: Access remarketing features to increase your ROI by showing more impactful and personalised ads. Recommended because you have enough traffic to benefit from remarketing.
- Target all eligible Shopping products: Get more conversion value by advertising all of your Shopping products with a catch-all campaign. Recommended because you have untargeted online products in your Shopping feed.
- Upload customer lists: Access remarketing features to increase your ROI by showing more impactful and personalised ads.
- Upload Customer Match lists: Show impactful and personalised ads to your existing customers using the contact information that they share with you. Recommended because you are eligible to use Customer Match feature.
- Use Display Expansion: Get more conversions at a similar CPA using unspent budget with the revamped Google Display Network Expansion feature. Recommended because some of your Search campaigns have unspent budget that can benefit from Display Expansion.
- Use optimised targeting: Get more conversions at a similar cost per conversion. Recommended because your Display, Demand Gen and video ads can reach more potential customers with optimised targeting.
Repairs
'Repairs' recommendations help you fix issues with your account and improve its overall health and performance. You might notice these recommendations:
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- Add ads to each ad group: Get your ads running by adding ads to each ad group.
- Add GTIN to your products: Get more traffic to your ads by adding GTIN to your products. Recommended because your products are experiencing limited performance due to missing the GTIN identifiers.
- Add keywords to each ad group: Get your ads running by adding keywords to each ad group.
- Add missing conversion parameters in your Hotel campaigns: Get more bookings at a similar or better ROI with accurate conversion parameters. Recommended because conversions are being reported, but conversions are missing required parameters for Hotel campaigns.
- Add products to your shopping campaigns: Fix campaigns that aren't serving by adding products to them. Recommended because you have campaigns with no products.
- Complete advertiser verification: Using logos in your search ads can improve engagement. Get access to logos by completing advertiser verification. Recommended because you haven’t completed advertiser verification.
- Fix disapproved Demand Gen campaign assets: Some of your assets aren't running because they violate Demand Gen ad requirements. Fix the disapproved assets to show them in your ads. Recommended because one or more of your assets don't meet Demand Gen ad requirements.
- Fix disapproved Performance Max assets: Maximise performance by fixing your disapproved Performance Max assets. Recommended because all of your assets of at least one type are disapproved.
- Fix disapproved products in your Shopping campaigns: You can't serve ads for disapproved products in your campaigns. Fix those products to show your ads. Recommended because your campaigns' products have been disapproved.
- Fix disapproved sitelinks: Some of your sitelinks were disapproved. Fix your sitelinks to make your ads more prominent.
- Fix low CPA targets: Start getting conversions by fixing your low CPA targets. Recommended because your campaigns are unlikely to get conversions at your current CPA targets.
- Fix Merchant Center account suspension: Your Merchant Center accounts are suspended. Fix them to show your ads. Recommended because you have Merchant Center accounts that are suspended due to data quality or policy violations.
- Fix misconfigured deep links: Get more app conversions at a similar CPA by fixing misconfigured deep links in your apps. Recommended because at least 10% of your app deep links are misconfigured.
- Fix overlapping App campaigns: Get more conversions at a similar cost by fixing App campaigns that target the same traffic. Recommended because competing campaigns can cause poor performance in App campaigns.
- Fix your ad destinations: Your ads were disapproved because of destination issues. Fix your ad destinations to show your ads.
- Fix your ad text: Your ads were disapproved because of editorial issues. Fix your ad text to show your ads.
- Fix your audience targeting: Ad groups that can no longer serve can start serving when you fix your audience targeting. Recommended because you have ad groups targeting or excluding audience segments that are disabled or have too few users.
- Fix your conversion action with a conversion rate drop: Make sure that you don’t miss any conversions. Fix your conversion tracking. Recommended because a large conversion rate drop was recently reported for some of your conversion actions.
- Fix your conversion tracking: You don’t have any website conversion actions that can be used for your automated bid strategy. Add a website conversion action and include it in the 'Conversions' column. Recommended because your bid strategy relies on conversions, but you don't have any website conversion actions included in bidding.
- Prevent Merchant Center account suspension: Your Merchant Center accounts are at risk of suspension. Address warnings to continue showing Shopping ads. Recommended because you have Merchant Center accounts at risk of suspension due to data quality or policy violations.
Measurement
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- Set up conversion tracking: Identify which of your clicks turn into customers and access features such as automated bidding. Recommended because conversion tracking lets you access features to better meet your business goals.
- Fix certification issues: Your ads are not running because of certification issues. Apply for certification to show your ads.
- Set up in-app conversion tracking: Identify which of your clicks lead to valuable customer actions in your app. Recommended because in-app conversion tracking lets you access features to better meet your business goals.
- Set up the global site tag: Improve your conversion tracking accuracy and access features that prevent conversion loss with a unified tag. Recommended because you're not using Google's newest conversion tag more accurate conversion measurement.
- Fix your global site tag issues: Make sure that you don't miss any conversions by fixing your global site tag issues. Recommended because your global site tag setup may be incorrect or incomplete.
- Set up conversion value measurement: Optimise towards the business objectives that matter by reporting conversion value. Recommended because you can unlock better performance for your campaigns by reporting and optimising for value that different conversions bring to your business.
- Set up enhanced conversions: You may not be measuring all of your conversions. Use enhanced conversions to improve your conversion tracking. Recommended because you have traffic in areas where there are known conversion measurement gaps.
- Set up a Google Analytics 4 property: Get the latest tools to improve marketing ROI and get privacy-safe insights by setting up a Google Analytics 4 property. Recommended because all Universal Analytics properties will be turned down in 2023, and you haven't started collecting data in a Google Analytics 4 property.
- Optimise for new customers: Get more new customers by optimising for them in addition to online sales. Recommended because you have campaigns that are eligible to optimise for new customer acquisition.
Other
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- Try the new Google Ads mobile app: Monitor performance and improve your account on the go. Recommended because you haven't used the Google Ads mobile app recently. The Google Ads mobile app enhances your Google Ads experience and helps you stay connected to your campaigns while on the go. In addition to monitoring your campaigns in real-time, you can review high-impact recommendations to improve performance and take action quickly and easily.
Proposed changes
Proposed changes are optimisations recommended by your Google Ads account representative to improve your campaign performance. Proposed changes initially surface in your account on the Recommendations page for you to review. If you agree with these optimisations, you can apply them to your account by clicking Apply all. Learn more About campaign drafts for Search and Display.
Scoring paused campaigns
After a campaign is paused, the campaign will continue to be scored:
- At the account or MCC level: For the next seven days, the campaign will continue to be scored as we aggregate scores based on the data from the last seven days. If the campaign remains paused after seven days, it’ll no longer be scored as stats will be reset to zero.
- At the campaign level: For the next 7–90 days, the campaign will continue to be scored, as recommendations are trained on data in a range of 7–90 days (the majority is trained on 28 days). If the campaign remains paused after the data has stopped generating, the recommendation will no longer surface or be scored.