Automated rules allow you to make automatic account changes based on chosen settings and conditions. With rules, you can change your ad status, budget, bids, and more. For example, you can set an automated rule to boost your keyword bid any time your ad falls off of the first page of Search results.
Learn more about how to Set up automated rules.
On this page
General tips
Use limits
Set minimum and maximum limits for your bids and budgets so they don't get too high or too low. Continuous bid hike can lead to unnecessarily high CPCs, while constant decreases could noticeably reduce your traffic.
Use enough data to make an informed decision
To ensure changes are made based on enough data, we recommend the use of a long enough timeframe or to include an additional requirement like "impressions > X" to your rule.
Preview
Preview your rules before saving them so you understand how they'll affect your campaigns. Based on your requirements and settings, you could make significant changes to a large portion of your account, so it's important to double-check.
Be vigilant
Try to implement a rule with a frequency of "one time" to monitor the actual impact. When you're comfortable with how your rules work, you can set them up to run on a recurring schedule (for example, daily or weekly).
Configure rules appropriate for your business
Be aware of intra-day and intra-week trends (for example, peak hour or weekday traffic could differ from non-peak hour and weekend traffic). Also be aware of how far away you are from your goals when setting magnitudes of changes (for example, changing in small increments of 5% when closer to your goal and large increments of 20% otherwise). All these issues can be addressed by using multiple rules in conjunction with one another.
Be smart when scheduling 2 rules that affect the same items
What happens if you have 2 rules that affect the same items scheduled to run at the same time? Rules don't have a way to prioritize themselves, so even when you have 2 rules set to make concurrent changes to the same entities, both rules will run and make the specified changes to all entities. We recommend that you don't schedule multiple rules at the same time if they affect the same set of data. Instead, if you'd like to have 2 or more rules that make changes to the same part of your campaign, we suggest that you choose different times of the day for the rules to run.
When multiple automated rules are scheduled to run on the same entities at the same time, the system may encounter incompatible changes, which can result in errors.
To prevent errors and prioritize changes, you can:
- Schedule rules with staggered start times.
- The rule set for the earliest time runs first, letting you control the sequence of changes.
Tips for rules that affect keyword bids
When you create recurring bid rules that operate on entire accounts or campaigns can be complicated. If they're applicable to your needs, you may want to try automatic bidding and Conversion Optimizer to help you manage your bids and budget. Here are some tips to help you configure automated rules that modify keyword bids and run on a regular basis.
Changing bids based on conversion data
To track a conversion requires more time compared to a click or impression. A conversion can happen many days after a click, and is only recorded if it happens within your chosen conversion window. Conversions also occur much less often than clicks or impressions. If you create any rules based on conversions, we recommend that you use longer "using data from" time ranges to properly capture your conversions.
Changing bids based on clickthrough rate (CTR)
Your ad's CTR depends on its position on the page. If you create a rule that lowers your bid if CTR is low, this could cause a negative spiral where the ad declines further down the page and your CTR falls lower accordingly.
Example
To learn more about how to create a rule to raise your budget for campaigns, review the example steps below.
- Go to the Campaigns, Ad groups, or Search keywords pages within the Campaigns menu
.
- Click the 3-dot icon
above the statistics table.
- Select Create an automated rule.
- Select Change budgets from the “Type of rule” drop-down.
- Choose which campaigns to change budgets for (All enabled campaigns, All enabled and paused campaigns, or Select campaigns).
- Under the “Action” drop-down select the action you want to trigger for your campaigns. You can choose to increase your budget by a percentage or specific amount. If you’d like to ensure you budget cost doesn’t exceed a certain amount for the billing period, you can set an optional upper budget limit.
- Choose a condition from the "Choose condition" drop-down.
- Click Add.
Note: Repeat steps 6–9 if you’d like to add multiple actions to your automated rule.
- Define the frequency of your rule.
- Choose the type of email updates you’d like to receive on issues affecting your rule.
- Name your rule.
- Click Preview to ensure you've set up your rule to run the way you want. Previewing is just for verification and doesn't make any permanent changes to your account.
- When you're done, click Save rule.
above the statistics table.