Why you should switch off Google ads auto-apply

A few of my clients have been caught out recently by Google automatically making changes in their account.

'How on earth can this happen?!' I hear you ask.

Well, Google make it very easy to opt into this 'auto-apply' feature without necessarily making it clear what will happen.

(And opting out isn't the easiest - we'll come back to that!)

These are the types of emails they send you to encourage you to opt in, which as you can see is fairly 'light touch' and very positive-sounding. Read on to find out why you shouldn't press that 'enable recommendations' button!

What can happen when you're opted in to Google Ads auto-apply changes?

I've just started working with a small chain of pizza take-aways, and look what I spotted here:

Google Ads can add keywords into your account

I've just started working with a small chain of pizza take-aways, and look what I spotted in their change history (this is a handy log of all changes made in a Google ads account!):

Google had added these 2 new keywords - neither of which was relevant and fitted their small, tight, new campaign.

1 - Yes, the client operates in London but they only do take-away not eat-in so a search including 'restaurant' is usually irrelevant (and I suggested 'restaurant' could be a negative keyword so they just focus on take-away searches)

2 - Someone searching for 'pizza toppings' isn't necessarily as ready to buy and order a pizza as someone searching for 'order pizza near me' for example. It's a research keyword, a bit higher up the buying funnel than my client would want.

Potentially they're thinking of ordering a take-away pizza, but they might also be looking for recipes for toppings for their home-made pizza.

I'd seen something similar earlier on in the year, a start-up in the financial services space got in touch asking for help with their Google Ads account as they'd launched a small 'car insurance for young drivers' campaign to test appetite for their new brand which started off ok but then quickly degraded.

I quickly found the culprit. Google had added in a load of new keywords. In this case, the keywords themselves weren't that bad in terms of relevancy BUT they were all 'broad match'. I cover match types briefly in this post about building Google Ads campaigns

but in a nutshell I recommend avoiding 'broad match' until you've built up a lot of conversion data and you've exhausted other growth options in your Google ads campaign.

Broad match can match you with very tenuous searches and you need to be managing your negative keywords even more carefully than usual.

So now you've seen those examples - imagine what keywords could be added to your account?!

What might be live without you even knowing about it?

Google Ads can Change your bidding strategy

The same client, on the same day, saw a change to their bidding strategy. I covered this off briefly in this post about things to watch out for with Google Ads - ideally everyone would be bidding to 'maximise conversions' but a lot of clients, including this one, doesn't have enough conversion data yet so is on 'maximise clicks' while it gathers data and learnings.

Luckily, this change didn't cause too much harm whereas....

The same happened with a previous client of mine. They were just starting off with digital marketing, and I helped them with a few things including setting up their Google Ads account. We were 'maximising clicks' and driving traffic to their new website while we waited for their developers to sort out tracking to let us 'maximise conversions'.

I went on holiday for a week.

While I was gone, my client clicked on a Google email opting in to 'auto accept'.

I came back to this:

What this graph shows is the yellow line - CPC's - jumped from under £0.50 to a peak of £4 during that week.

Daily spend jumped from about £100 per day to as high as £375.

Meanwhile clicks dropped from about 250 per day to around 100 per day.

That would be ok if it generated more meaningful conversions, but in this case the conversion actions weren't set up properly, and even if they were, the change didn't have any positive impact on them so they reverted back.

An annoying mistake for the client and me. Since then I've always included this as something to watch out for (opt out of) in Google Ads/audit checklists since then.

How to opt out of Google Ads auto-apply

As I said, earlier, it's not the easiest or most logical path to opt out of this.

Navigate to 'Recommendations' on the left hand side of Google Ads and you'll see this screen...

See 'Auto-apply' there in the right hand side?

Once you've clicked on that, you'll see a screen like this....

If you have none selected as in this screenshot, all is good - you're not opted in to 'auto-apply'.

If you have any selected, it means you are opted in and you should be able to click on the buttons to 'de-select'.

Should I switch on Google Ads auto-apply?

I've covered a couple of things that could go wrong by switching it on.

And honestly, I can't see any benefit of switching it on.

Google is always trying to grow it's profits. While it makes all the right noises about helping advertisers and trying to make it easier for them, does this feature know enough about you and your business strategy to work effectively?

If you're opted in, it can also do things like:

• add in advert headlines/descriptions - how on earth would it know whether these are 'on brand' or compliant in your industry?!

• adjust your CPA and/or ROAS targets if you're using these bidding strategies - these could be expensive changes

I recommend you:

• check that you're not opted in to this (and if you are, opt out)

• learn the basics of managing and optimising Google Ads rather than letting Google do it for you....

Of course if you're stuck and/or don't know where to start, I'm here to help.

I've helped many businesses improve their PPC (Google Ads) performance from PPC audits to digital marketing power hours and PPC coaching which has sometimes meant switching it off! It isn't for everyone, and it's an easy way to waste money if things aren't set up right....

More on that on these posts which you might enjoy if you're enjoyed this one :)

• Is Google Ads worth it?

• Things to watch out for when you build a Google Ads campaign