Google has gone to great lengths to make Google Ads user friendly so users of all levels and jump in and leverage the platform. However, in our experience getting an account launched is easy, but making an account successful is another story. This isn’t to say 0% of users can master the platform and succeed, but think of today’s story as a bit of a cautionary tale about taking a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to Google Ads.
One set of features somewhat new to Google Ads is the Recommendations tab. Essentially, it’s a set of nudges that point out best practices you haven’t built into your account. So far so good.
One set of recommendations that can appear in that tab are the ‘Auto-Apply’ settings. They can be anything from bid changes to removing redundant keywords automatically…so far nothing too controversial. However, there are some settings that can get users into trouble; things like auto-generating new ads or adding new keywords.
In some cases, accounts can run a little wild, including one account we’ve help to clean up with thousands of irrelevant keywords added over a relatively short period of time. Thankfully the costs associated with these issues haven’t been high, but these keywords are still bad for both the client and the users coming to the site.
The lesson here has two sides…first, these features are powerful and can radically change the look and performance of an account. Second, it’s ultimately up to the account manager to make sure any change they make to an account doesn’t have a bad outcome. If the owner doesn’t have the time or expertise to follow up on account changes, they should consider some professional Google Ads management. Setting aside some of your budget for account management is going to yield a better result than running ads for the wrong users.