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Why do I always get better results when I do the exact OPPOSITE of what Google recommends?
* I pin my best-performing ad headlines to Responsive Search Ads, so I lose ‘ad quality’ which changes to “Poor”; I immediately get an uptick in click-through rate & conversions/revenue
* I turn off any auto-recommendations account-wide; I immediately save tons of money on wasted garbage clicks served to irrelevant people
* I bid on keywords with low “Quality Score” for my landing pages & ad copy; they become my best-converting keywords that make the most money
* I enable only Phrase and Exact Match keywords in search campaigns; I get way more qualified traffic and conversions, and waste tons less money on junk searches and clicks despite being spammed to “UPGRADE TO BROAD MATCH!™”
* I ditch the “suggested” Responsive Display Ads and use properly-designed ad banners; they get way more CTR and actually convert
* I combine multiple display targeting dimensions despite being spammed to “YOU WILL LOSE PERFORMANCE BY COMBINING MULTIPLE TARGETING METHODS!”… the display placements immediately appear on much more relevant websitesdoes pretty much ANYTHING that Google “advise” ever actually result in positive results other than *maybe* for people who have absolutely zero clue what they are doing in Google Ads…? ????♂️
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1 Reply
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Lol, have you met my good friend PMAX
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And what happens when you try to scale doing the opposite?
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I see you must have NOT tried their mobile app too.
#WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY THE NEW GOOGLE ADS MOBILE APP (+0.0% Optimisation Score)
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Yeah, that’s because you’re buying a fraction of the traffic and the narrow approach brings you better results. Broad match, for example, can work well coupled with max value bidding, but if you don’t have to rapidly scale, it’s not needed. Some other things like pmax, smart display and many other products are extremely hard to convert sometimes.
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This is the way
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I agree with your points. Only issue is it will be difficult to scale your campaign to bigger audience due to limited data.
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Because Google is in the business of making money, not helping you spend your budget in the most efficient manner.
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Yep, Google reps and even the AI aren’t really instructed to look at the size or context of a particular account. For that reason, we’ve completely stopped taking the rep meetings at my agency.
Applying certain things in your list such as broad match keywords can be effective when applied to larger accounts.
But some stuff like auto-apply recommendations are just garbage at this point.
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Could I please quote this for a PPC Live UK blog? Thank you!! ????
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It sounds like you run an account like a bonsai tree. Beautifully kept, overmanaged and will never grow.
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Because Google recommendations are in Google’s best interest, not yours.
Sometimes the interests align, sometimes they don’t.
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The “why” doesn’t matter, it just is
Same for fb, I avoid their recommendations like the plague
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Google wants to make money. Their recommendations make money for them, I do believe ????
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