Use recommendations in Editor

You can use Editor to quickly implement recommendations to improve your performance. Applying recommendations boosts your campaign optimisation score.

This article explains how to apply recommendations and find your optimisation score in Google Ads Editor.

You’ll also learn how syncing between Google Ads and Editor affects your recommendations, and how recommendations can inform you of best practices when adding new content.

Instructions

1. Apply recommendations

Note:

An empty or white lightbulb indicates available recommendations.
A solid or blue lightbulb indicates applied recommendations.
A bulb with an orange circle indicates applied recommendations that have a new update discovered via 'Get recent changes' (GRC).
- For example, you have applied a recommendation to raise the budget to £20, then did a GRC which discovered from the server that in the meantime the recommendation was updated to £30. In this case Editor would keep the original £20 budget that you set and let you know that the recommendation was updated (by showing this icon).

You can find new recommendations, identified by this lightbulb icon on items throughout Editor.

Click the lightbulb icon to see a description of that recommendation.
Click View to see more information about this recommendation.
Click Apply to enable this recommendation in your account.
After clicking 'Apply', the lightbulb icon will look like this .
To undo a recommendation, click this lightbulb icon and click Unapply.

A view of all recommendations can be accessed from the type list in your Editor account or by clicking the link next to the optimisation score on the Accounts and Campaigns edit panel.

In the type list, click Recommendations to expand.
You’ll see an expanded list of the types of recommendations in your account, and a summary page with all recommendations.
Double-click any recommendation type in the table or click on any recommendation type to see the recommendations available by account, campaign and ad group.
- For example, if you click Add responsive search ads you’ll see a list of recommended responsive search ads to create, including the headline and description text for these new ads.
- The 'Account score uplift' and 'Campaign score uplift' columns show the percentage increase in your optimisation score from applying each recommendation.
To apply individual recommendations, select recommendations from the list and click Apply.
- Once applied, you’ll see a blue light bulb icon appear in the recommendation status column.
- These applied recommendations will also appear in their related location in Editor, where they can be identified by the blue light bulb icon . For example, if you created responsive search ads, you’ll see a list of new ads with the blue light bulb in on the Responsive search ads page. You can access the page quickly by clicking View applied recommendation.
To undo recommendations, select the items in the list with the blue light bulb and click Unapply.

2. Find your optimisation score

Accounts and campaigns

Your optimisation score is available for accounts and campaigns in the edit panel to the right of the data table.

To see the account’s optimisation score, click Accounts in the type list and select an account. The account’s optimisation score will appear in the edit panel and in the grid view.
- Clicking View recommendations will take you to the recommendations summary page. Note: This is also possible on the campaigns tab. Double clicking on an account will 1) automatically rescope to that account, and 2) navigate you to the campaigns under that account. To rescope to multiple accounts, select them then right click and select 'Copy selection to tree view'.
- This score combines the optimisation scores of all the campaigns in your account.
To see a campaign’s optimisation score, click Campaigns in the type list and select a campaign. The campaign’s optimisation score will also appear in the edit panel.
Select multiple accounts or campaigns to see the combined optimisation score for these items.

Recommendations page

You can also see your optimisation score above the data table on your recommendation pages.

In the type list, click Recommendations. The summary page for your recommendations will show in the data view.
Above the data table, you’ll see the optimisation score for the downloaded account or campaign which has been selected. For example, if you select an account, Editor will show the score for all downloaded campaigns, not for the full account.

3. Editing recommendations in context

The details of recommendations can be edited after application.

Apply a recommendation
Navigate to the section where the relevant entity is listed.
- For example, if the recommendation was to add a keyword navigate to the keywords section via the type list.
Edit any of the fields of the entity.

4. Ensure recommendations in Editor match Google Ads

As you may receive new recommendations in Google Ads regularly, the recommendations you see in Editor may be outdated. If you’re applying recommendations in Editor, make sure to do so shortly after downloading your account data.

If you applied a recommendation in Editor that’s no longer available in Google Ads, the next time you sync with Google Ads, the row for that recommendation will be crossed out in the data table.

5. Use recommendations for best practices

Recommendations can help to improve the content that you add to Editor. For example, if you create a new ad with two lines of headline text and one line of description text, you may see a best practice suggestion to add a third line of headline text and a second line of description text. This suggestion is based on Google’s best practices for text ads.

Previously, these suggestions may have appeared as error messages, instead of recommendations. The custom rules that control some of your error messages have been replaced by recommendations.

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