Google's Shady Change January 2023

Google made an announcement this week regarding automatically applied recommendations and redundant keywords. They did it so slightly that it didn't even make their announcements page or maybe they laid off the person responsible for that. I wrote some thoughts on the matter below and how we will be handling it as a company.

Google, or as I commonly refer to them G$$gle has done it again. Let’s set the scene. A few years ago, Google released ‘optimization scores’ within their recommendations tab. Every recommendation has the potential to increase your optimization score by a set percentage depending on the complexity of the recommendation. Google tried to force advertisers to comply with their recommendations by requiring a minimum optimization score in order to retain their Google Partner status. That plan was thankfully abandoned, however, you can’t convince me that compliance with recommendations and optimization scores doesn’t affect accounts in some manner. This is why personally, we dismiss recommendations that don’t align with our account goals.

Fast-forward a year or two, and Google releases a new feature, Auto-Applied Recommendations (AAR). These were advertised to advertisers as an easy way to make smart decisions automatically within the account. We were very hesitant to implement this for certain recommendations, but there were some no-brainers for us. One of them being Remove Redundant Keywords. This recommendation looked at keywords within the same ad group, final URL destination, bid strategy, and match type. When enabled it would automatically clean up the account allowing for ease of management without really having any impact to the account.

Well, when something sounds too good to be true it usually is. This month Google nonchalantly sends an email notifying advertisers that the AAR for Redundant Keywords would be changing. Instead of looking at keywords in the same ad group, final destination, bid strategy, AND match type. They would expand this recommendation to remove redundant keywords across all match types.

How does this look exactly? If one ad group is bidding on phrase match: “women’s hats” and broad match: ladies hats then Google is going to remove the redundant keyword “women’s hats”. Google is going to prefer the broad match keyword over any other match type. Women and Ladies are considered close variants and redundant to one another.

This by itself isn’t a make-or-break issue. The stakes aren’t that high. The issue is how Google handled the change. They didn’t offer this as a new AAR that could be enabled that you could choose to opt in to. They decided to fundamentally change the way in which the recommendation worked and then notify advertisers with a 15-day notice that this change was going to occur giving you an opportunity to opt out. What if you missed that email or it went to your spam folder? You agreed to set rules of the game and then mid-game Google changed the terms. It’s like going in to get a tire plugged at the shop and then being told that actually they put a new set of wheels on.

It’s a slippery slope. If they can change the rules in the middle of a game, how can we trust them to apply any changes for us? The need for representatives for businesses against Google is getting more apparent each day just take a look at the suits filed against them recently. Not to mention how they handled reducing 6% of their entire workforce. Those are discussions for another day though.

What does this mean for the accounts we manage? Simply put, there will not be any auto-applied recommendations added, no matter how easy of a decision it was prior. It also removes any fraction of trust that we had in Google to automatically do what is best for our accounts. Greg Finn said it best, “similar expansion-esque recommendations like “Expand your reach with Google search partners” or “Use optimized targeting” also exist without a ying to said yang. It’s hard to welcome these spend-first, inflationary recommendations under a fiduciary lens.”

Until Google begins to incorporate the yang in those recommendations, we will continue to scrutinize their recommendations. It isn’t our job to dismiss those recommendations without accessing the potential benefit they have to the account, just like it shouldn’t be Google’s job to blindly recommend more more more without considering your bottom line. Right now, Google is trying to get you the most conversions without considering the cost of those conversions. Your solution isn’t for everyone. Your target market isn’t every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the globe. How can you expect to get the lowest cost per acquisition if you are trying to appeal to every individual?

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