Google's automatically applied recommendations - should you accept them

Google's Recommendations tab offers suggestions for improving your account - adding keywords, adjusting bids, expanding match types, enabling features. You can apply these manually one by one. Or you can turn on auto-apply, which lets Google implement the recommended changes automatically on a schedule. The appeal is obvious: less manual work, and Google presumably knows what works. The reality is more complicated.

What auto-apply can change

The scope of automatically applied recommendations is broad. It covers match type changes - including broadening exact and phrase match keywords. It covers bid adjustments - including raising target CPA or ROAS targets beyond what you set. It covers adding new keywords, enabling ad rotation settings, turning on features like Optimised Targeting, and in some cases restructuring ad groups. Any of these changes can materially affect campaign performance and cost. Some can trigger new learning periods that disrupt campaigns for weeks.

The incentive misalignment problem

Google's recommendations optimise for a metric called Optimisation Score - a number between 0 and 100 that Google uses to assess account health. Optimisation Score improves when you apply recommendations. The problem is that Optimisation Score does not perfectly correlate with your business goals. Recommendations that improve Optimisation Score often involve broadening reach, which increases spend. A recommendation to expand to broad match, enable more features, or raise budget caps all improve your Optimisation Score. They do not necessarily improve your CPA or ROAS.

The recommendations worth considering manually

Some Google recommendations are genuinely useful and worth applying - but through review, not automation. Adding negative keywords from the search term report, fixing broken destination URLs, enabling call extensions, and setting up conversion tracking correctly are all recommendations that are usually sensible. Review them individually, verify the rationale, and apply the ones that make sense for your specific objectives.

My recommendation

Turn auto-apply off for all recommendation categories if it is currently enabled. Check your account settings under Recommendations and review which categories have been switched on. Then review the recommendations list weekly as a prompt for account optimisation, but make your own decisions about what to apply. Treating Google's suggestions as a checklist to work through rather than automated changes is a much safer approach. The time saved by auto-apply is not worth the risk of an algorithm making material changes to accounts without your knowledge.