You might notice that every now and then Google will alert you to various opportunities in your Adwords account. These opportunities can range from keyword suggestions, to structural changes with your campaigns and ad groups. While many of these hints might seem like a good suggestions, they could actually steer your account into trouble. It’s important to remember that these alerts are triggered from the Google system. They aren’t sent to you from a PPC manager. Because of this these alerts should be analyzed carefully.
The below image displays just a few opportunities that Google suggests
From the example you will notice a prompt to raise your budgets. This alert is very common. This may or may not be a good idea, especially if your budget can’t go any higher. Another prompt you see is to optimize your ad rotation. If you drill down into this specific opportunity, the Google system is recommending that I optimize for clicks. While this will help my traffic to a degree, it will also remove my ability to split test. My preferred setting is to rotate the ads evenly indefinitely. This allows my ads to be served 50/50. With each ad having an equal share, it’s easier to determine which ad is performing the best.
The screenshot below is an example of a Google opportunity related to adding suggested keywords from Google. These keyword suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt. By no means should you just agree to add every suggestion that Google gives you. In this example Google is suggesting that I add keywords related to surveys. Some of these are decent, however the keyword “surveys that pay” is not relevant to the current goals of the site. The add even says free online survey, but the highlighted keyword suggestion is for surveys that pay. Adding this keyword would be very detrimental to the account. Keyword suggestions should be analyzed extra carefully and you shouldn’t do it just because Google suggested you do it.
In conclusion. While Google can actually give good suggestions to help improve your account, the opportunities should be carefully considered before implementation. Do yourself and your clients a favor by filtering out the bad and implementing the good.