What Google Ads Optimization Score Really Measures (and Why You Can Mostly Ignore It)

Optimization Score takes pride of place in the Google Ads interface: a percentage, often with a notification badge, followed by a list of ways to raise it. It looks like a performance grade. It is not one.

Understanding what Optimization Score measures, and what it does not, is one of the more useful things you can learn about your account. In plenty of accounts, chasing a high score does real damage.

What Optimization Score Measures

Optimization Score shows how closely your account matches Google’s recommended settings. It is based on how many of Google’s recommendations you have applied, weighted by Google’s estimate of their potential impact.

It does not tell you:

• Whether your campaigns are profitable
• Whether you are hitting your ROAS target
• Whether conversion tracking is accurate
• Whether your account structure suits your business
• Whether your budget is being spent efficiently

All it measures is how similar your setup is to the one Google recommends.

That distinction matters. Google’s recommendations come from algorithms that optimise towards Google’s goals, including more conversion volume, which means more spend and more revenue for Google. Often those goals line up with yours. When they do not, Optimization Score nudges you towards settings that help Google more than your business.

Why 100% Is Not the Target

A score of 100% means you have applied every recommendation Google has made. Those regularly include “lower your target ROAS”, “add broad match keywords”, “turn on auto-applied recommendations” and “expand to more networks”. So a perfect score often means you have loosened exactly the controls that keep the account efficient and profitable.

The goal is not a particular score. It is an account that hits your business objectives, whether that is a ROAS figure, a CPA ceiling, a revenue target or a profit margin. Some accounts get there at 60%, others at 85%. The number itself is not what you should be optimising.

The Loop Google Wants You In

This is the mechanism worth understanding.

Google shows a recommendation and gives it a points value (“applying this will raise your Optimization Score by 5 points”). You apply it, the score rises, the recommendation disappears and new ones take its place.

If you judge account health by Optimization Score, you end up in an endless loop of applying whatever Google currently suggests to keep the number up. That suits Google, because it keeps your settings drifting towards more spend. It does not reliably suit your profitability.

The alternative is to judge account health by real performance (ROAS, CPA, revenue and profit) and use those numbers to decide whether any given recommendation is worth applying.

Recommendations Worth Applying

Despite all that, Optimization Score does surface some recommendations that are genuinely worth acting on.

Fix conversion tracking issues. When Google flags tracking problems, deal with them. Tracking quality underpins everything Smart Bidding does, and this category of recommendation is almost always valid.

Add responsive search ad assets. If your RSAs have fewer headlines and descriptions than recommended, adding more varied, relevant options genuinely improves performance by giving the RSA system more to test. Usually worth accepting.

Add a clearly relevant missing asset. If Google recommends sitelinks and you have none, add them: sitelinks lift CTR and make your ad bigger on the page. Check the suggested text for accuracy before applying.

Set a target ROAS once you have the volume. If Google suggests moving from Maximise Conversion Value to Target ROAS and you really do have 50+ conversions in the last 30 days, the recommendation is pointing at something real. Its suggested target is usually cautious, so base the target on your own historical performance instead.

Recommendations to Dismiss

You can dismiss recommendations without applying them. Dismissing removes the suggestion from your list without making the change, and Google recalculates your score.

Regularly dismissing recommendations that do not suit your account should be a normal part of managing it. It is a deliberate, legitimate practice, not a sign that something is wrong.

Dismiss these by default:

“Lower your target ROAS”: one of Google’s most frequent suggestions. It really means “you could get more conversions if you paid more for each one”. Whether that makes sense depends on your margins. If your target is set where it is for profitability reasons, do not lower it because a score suggests it.

“Add broad match keywords”: for accounts with strong conversion data and Smart Bidding this can be legitimate. For most accounts it widens query coverage in ways that are hard to control. Judge each case rather than applying it across the board.

“Expand to Google search partners”: traffic quality is lower on average than Google Search. Usually not worth the extra spend.

“Use enhanced CPC” when you already run Target ROAS: this makes no sense for an account already on Smart Bidding. Dismiss it.

“Raise your budget” on a campaign that is not budget-limited: if a campaign is not hitting its daily cap, more budget changes nothing. Google sometimes shows this for campaigns with a theoretical ceiling. Dismiss it.

“Remove redundant keywords”: sometimes valid, and sometimes Google labelling well structured exact match coverage as “redundant” because it wants you to rely on broad match. Review each one.

Use the Score as a Prompt, Not an Instruction

The most useful way to treat Optimization Score is as a reminder to review your account, not as an instruction to apply things.

When the score drops, ask which new recommendation you have not applied, read it and judge it against your performance goals. If it reveals a genuine gap (missing assets, tracking problems, a valuable keyword you missed), act on it. If it suggests a setup that helps Google’s spend volume more than your profitability, dismiss it and move on.

A practical routine: review the Recommendations page weekly, apply what is genuinely useful, dismiss the rest, and track real performance (ROAS, CPA, revenue) as the measure of account health.

After that process your score might sit at 55%. That 55% describes an account set up the way you want, with the suggestions that do not fit your business set aside. That is the right way to read it.

An account pushed towards 100% by accepting every recommendation increasingly resembles Google’s ideal setup for maximum spend. That is a different goal from maximum profit, and for most store owners it is the wrong one.