Let's Audit an Account with 29.6% Optimization Score (Episode 491)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Let's Audit an Account with 29.6% Optimization Score"

The Paid Search Podcast | Episode 491
Host: Chris Schaeffer
Date: December 8, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Chris Schaeffer tackles the contentious topic of Google Ads Optimization Score by auditing a real client account with a notably low score of 29.6%. Chris demonstrates the disconnect between Google's optimization recommendations and what actually leads to business success in paid search—illustrating that a low optimization score can disguise a highly effective, well-managed, and profitable Google Ads account.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Context: What Does a 29.6% Optimization Score Really Mean?

• Chris sets the stage: The account being audited has an optimization score of only 29.6%. Chris underscores how, by Google’s standards, this would be considered "failing" and presumably underperforming (00:19).
• He challenges this assumption by promising to “lift the curtain” and show the real story behind the numbers.

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2. Actual Account Performance: The Reality Behind the Score

• Account Background: Chris has managed the account for years; it’s for a fence company focused on specialized fencing.
• Performance Facts:
  • Conversion Rate: 13% over last 150 days
  • Impression Share: 50% (client appears in half of all relevant searches)
  • First Position Rate: 40%
  • Leads Count: Hundreds over the measured period
  • Growth: Business scaling, opening in new cities, increasing spend, “dominating” competitors
  • Auction Insights: Next best competitor at only 18% impression share; most are below 10% (05:39–07:10)
• Account Health:
  • Search terms are "clean"—virtually no need to add negative keywords
  • Automated bidding running at “maximize conversions”—no target CPA as system runs so well
  • Client is expanding and repeatedly hitting growth targets

“This is not an account that is failing. This is an account… at the top of their market. The nearest competitor is at 18% impression share; they're at 50%… They have left every other competitor in the dust.”
— Chris Schaeffer, (06:00)

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3. Peeling Back the Optimization Score: Google’s Recommendations & Their Pitfalls

a) Maximize Conversion Value (09:33)

• Google's Recommendation: Switch from maximize conversions to maximize conversion value (for +24% score).
• Chris Pushes Back: The client doesn’t (and can’t) assign dollar values to leads at the campaign level. Switching would result in undesirable bidding behavior.

“This would be an absolute disaster because this client gets leads and there is no value that's set up for these leads.”
— Chris, (10:01)

b) Enable “AI Max” for Search Campaigns (+20%) (12:27)

• Explanation: Turns over significant campaign control to Google’s AI.
• Chris’ View: Unreliable, brings in untargeted traffic, endangers relevance and budget control.

“AI is code word for lazy growth… It looks shiny, it sounds cool, but it’s trash.”
— Chris, (14:32)

c) Set Target CPA (+17%)

• Chris is neutral: Useful in some cases, but questioned why basic bid strategy change is so “optimizing.”
• Big Insight: Recommendations are mostly about expanding spend and reach, not improving efficiency or targeting.

d) Add Broad Match Keywords (+8%)

• Criticism: With search terms already extremely clean, broad match would “write a blank check” and lower quality.

“Why would they need broad match keywords when I told you... my search terms are so clean?”
— Chris, (18:01)

e) Launch Performance Max Campaign (+10%) (19:07)

• Risks: Money wasted on non-search, low-intent placements (YouTube, Discover, Gmail, etc.)

“You know who’s ready to hire a fence contractor? People who are searching for fence contractors... not someone checking their Gmail.”
— Chris, (20:07)

f) Enable Search Partners (+3%)

• Verdict: Chris calls Search Partners “a breeding place for spam” and irrelevant clicks (22:03).

g) Add Suggested Keywords (+2%)

• Examples: “Privacy netting,” “wireless underground fence,” “underground fencing for pets”—all totally irrelevant to the business (24:49–26:16).
• Humorous Riff: Chris is baffled by terms like “privacy netting”—pokes fun at absurdity.

“What the frick is privacy netting?... If you want privacy, you don’t put up a net. I don’t even know what that is.”
— Chris, (25:16)

h) Add Company Name to Ads (+2%)

• Chris’ View: Ridiculous, “insulting” suggestion—mass-applied, one-size-fits-all AI logic.

“This is so lazy. This is, this AI bullcrap that makes absolutely no sense.”
— Chris, (29:05)

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4. Meta-Insight: What Optimization Score REALLY Measures

• Expansion vs. Focus:
  • Google’s optimization score is heavily biased toward encouraging:
    • Broader targeting
    • More automation/AI
    • More campaign types
    • Increased ad spend
  • There’s little emphasis on:
    • Tightening keyword targeting
    • Eliminating waste
    • Actual business goals/helpful nuance

“Every time it expands my campaign, Google insists that that is an optimization score improvement... Expansion is optimization… Not depth, but width.”
— Chris, (20:34, 20:55)

• Why? Chris likens it to the bakery recommending more donuts—not a conspiracy, just a reflection of Google’s business incentives (03:09, 21:20).

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5. Do Any Recommendations Hold Value?

• Lightning Round: Chris finds only rare instances where Google's recommendations are remotely useful, but most are either irrelevant or counterproductive.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On trusting Google:

  “No one cares about your business like you. Your employees don’t really care about your business. Google certainly doesn’t…” (04:12)

• On “AI Max”:

  “It’s just… they’ve added chrome. They put chrome on top of my crappy part and said it’s an improvement.” (14:32)

• On broad match keywords:

  “…almost like writing a blank check.” (17:55)

• On the core issue:

  “Optimization does not mean optimization the way that you see it. It means optimization for them.” (21:34)

• On irrelevant suggestions:

  “Privacy netting… maybe they’re having a mental breakdown and… want to put a screen so the aliens can’t read their mind.” (27:13)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:19 – Introduction, setting up the optimization score “myth”
• 05:04 – Actual business and campaign performance breakdown
• 09:33 – Beginning of Google’s recommendations, critique starts
• 10:54 – Deep dive into dangers of maximize conversion value bidding
• 12:55 – Chris explains why AI Max can hurt the account
• 15:51 – Critique of target CPA recommendation
• 17:06 – “Expanding” vs “focusing”—Google’s optimization philosophy
• 19:07 – Performance Max campaign pitfalls
• 22:03 – Search Partners warning
• 24:49 – Keyword suggestion absurdities
• 28:00 – Chris defines true optimization: “making money, getting leads, selling products”
• 29:43 – “Optimization score leads you down the wrong path”
• 30:58 – Episode wrap-up and actionable takeaway

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Conclusion & Takeaway

Chris closes with a powerful warning about misinterpreting optimization scores:

• A high optimization score does NOT equal a high-performing or efficient account—sometimes quite the opposite.
• Most recommendations serve Google’s interests by expanding reach and spend, not optimizing for your unique business context or bottom line.
• Be skeptical: Use business results and “on-the-ground” account metrics (like conversion volume, cost per conversion, search term quality) as your real optimization benchmark—not a generic Google score.

"There you go—the tale of a 29.6 optimization score in Google Ads and the truth about how I see it and what optimization score really means and how you should interpret it."
— Chris Schaeffer, (30:58)

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Find Chris for an audit: chrisschaeffer.com
Podcast website: paidsearchpodcast.com

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

Hello, and welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris and today we're going to talk about an account that has a 29.6 optimization score. All right, so this account, as the optimization score might make you think, is highly unoptimized. It is therefore, you would assume struggling and not getting conversions, not performing in its market. It's doing very poorly. It has an extremely low conversion rate, we would assume, based on this optimization score. So the optimization score is 29%. Right. If we were in school, this would be a failing grade. So very little of this account is optimized.

According to this optimization score. And I'm going to tell you about this account. I'm going to go through how, according to Google, this account can be optimized and improved. And before I do that, I'm going to tell you how this account is actually performing. Okay? So I'm going to, I'm going to lift the curtain. I'm going to show you the facts of how this campaign is actually performing. Then we're going to go in and we're going to look at what Google thinks needs to be done in order for this account to perform better. Quote, unquote, better. All right, so before I jump into that, let's get my sponsor up on the screen here. Optio.com PSP is the sponsor that brings this podcast and every podcast I do directly to your ears. It is something I highly recommend that you try out and it helps keep me in my campaigns that I work on and my clients that I work on, focused on and optimize the right way. Today, I'm going to talk about the optimization score from Google. But Opteo helps you with optimization the right way and it is a tool that is designed to help you get more done in Google Ads. You can try it for free for 28 [e-mail] PSP so to be clear, today's episode is about optimization score according to Google, not Optio's optimization process. So this is, this is very different because.

When you get your advice from Google, it's jaded.

Right? If you go to.

Your local bakery and ask them for health advice, they might point you to their low fat donuts, right? When you go to your car guy and say, hey, I really need to save money, you know, what improvement should I do to my car? They're still going to point you to things like buying new tires, replacing your air filter, you know, stuff that you don't really have to do, but that's what they want you to do. Those are the things that they're incentivized to tell you to do those things, not because they're bad people, but because they're a business. So we're going to lift the curtain on this optimization score. And it's not because I think Google is evil or they're evil corporation. It's a business. And they're incentivized to tell you to do these things because that's what's important to them. It may not be important to you. It's your job.

To distinguish where the line is. Google's not going to know what's important to your business. You are. They work with thousands, millions of businesses around the world. They don't actually have customers optimizations that are, that are specific to you. That is ridiculous if you think that they actually care about your business. No one cares about your business like you. Your employees don't really care about your business. Google certainly doesn't care about your business. The person who cares about your business is the person that owns and is directly affected and impacted. And it's a better, better lifestyle because of your business. Those are the people that really care.

All right, so let's talk about, let's lift the curtain. Let's talk about this business that has a 29.6 optimization score. And let's talk about what, what's really going on with this account. So this is an account that I've been managing for a very long time. I'm going to pull up 150 days of data on this account. And this account runs at about a 13% conversion rate. They get hundreds and hundreds of conversions. These are leads. This is a lead generation.

Account. And they show up on Google about 50% of the time. So the market is not fully saturated, but they get 50% search impression share. So they show up about half the time and they show up in first position about 40% of the time. But the fact is, what you don't know about this company is that this company is growing. This company is scaling, okay? They're, they're in the fence business, okay? They do fences, specialized fences. So they're interested in getting sales and leads and, and stuff. And they've been growing their spend over the years that I've worked with them. And now they're at the point where they're growing to different cities. They're now expanding and creating new cities, new businesses, you know, and expanding their market into new cities, creating new campaigns. This is not an account that is failing. This is an account. Whenever I pull up the auction Insights. And look at the auction insights on this. They are at the top of their market. The nearest Competitor is at 18% impression share. They're at 50%. They have left every other competitor in the dust. Everyone else is at less than 10% impression share.

Below that.

So they've, they may have more than they could grow, sure. But every competitor is miles behind in their ability to show ads. The other competitors only show ads above them 20 to 30% of the time. They are in first position the vast majority of time and they cover many, many more impressions. Okay. And for the purpose of non disclosure, I just can't tell you what their actual keywords are, but I can tell you that their keywords are clean. I mean I've been working on this account for years. So I mean.

I personally work on this, so I mean I do good work. So, so that aside, when I look at their search terms, there just aren't neg. I don't have to add negative keywords anymore. I mean I'm not even adding negative keywords on a regular basis because their search terms are so clean. They're running, they're at the point where they're running automated bidding. We're running maximize conversions. This thing's running so well. I don't even have target CPA anymore. Like the searches are running so well. I have lifted the restraints off of the bidding capacity on this. So it's running pretty wide open. And they're expanding, they're growing, they're adding more budget, they're doing very well. Okay, so that's, that's the report of how this account actually works. And is, is, is looking from a business perspective, right? From a Google Ads business perspective, it is strong, it is working well, it's growing. It is absolutely in the fourth stage, the first, the fourth phase of Google Ads management, they are scaling, they're growing, they're expanding, they're hitting capacity every single month on their goals and they're growing beyond that. So it's sustained, it's manageable, it's perfect.

Or near perfect because according to, to Google's optimization score, they're failing.

They have extremely low optimization score. So let's go in.

And try and figure out what is it that's so bad. What does Google think that needs to be done? Okay, so the very first recommendation that comes in is Google wants us to apply maximize conversion value. So they want us to change our bidding strategy to max conversion value bidding. Okay, so that's a completely different bidding strategy. It's not maximize conversions. They want to bid based on the value of these conversions. This would be an absolute disaster because this client gets leads and there is no value that's set up for these leads. They get quote requests from a form, they get calls from ads and they get phone calls from, from their website. Absolutely no value can be determined from the quote request. It would always have to be something after the quote request happened. So there is no value being calculated at the campaign level yet. Google tells me based on the recommendations here that I could go from a 29.6.

Optimization score up twin another 24% up. So I would be above 50. Suddenly my optimization score would be above 50 just by changing the bidding strategy to something that is, I can tell you from experience would be absolutely atrocious. It would start bidding on a value based system that has no basis in reality. Now if I applied this, which I'm not going to do, I'd love to but I'm dealing with real businesses, real jobs, real people here. So you know, I wish I could just to show how bad of a.

Recommendation this actually is. But from experience I can tell you value based bidding for a lead generation company that doesn't have Salesforce in place, doesn't have after, you know, after lead qualification, standardized qualifications set up.

And even if they did, oftentimes it is a disaster. Value based bidding is something that works much better with E commerce, you know, online stores, things like that, that, that, that works much better. So that's the number one thing they suggest something that would absolutely kill the campaign.

That would be a 24% boost in my optimization score. Absolute trash. Let's move to the next one. What's the next one? I could also receive a 20% boost by turning on AI MA.

For my search campaign. 20% boost. So now just by including these two I'd be able to shoot up about 45% in my optimization score. So I'd be looking at about suddenly my campaign optimization go from 29% to about 70% just by applying automated bidding based on value which is has no basis in reality.

And also turning on AI Max. Now if you haven't heard of AI Max, essentially what it is, it tells when you have AI Max turned on. You allow Google to ignore your keywords.

An indetermined amount of your budget will go to Google. Just deciding I'm going to grab this traffic, I'm going to grab this traffic. Now that's a really dumbed down way of saying it, but that's really what's happening. It looks at your website and decides Oh, I think your website would do well with this traffic, right? It might start getting me fencing terms that is not specialized to what this client does. They only do specific types of fencing. It might get, you know, fence construction searches that are looking for chain link or for, you know, wooden fences or, you know, fences that are absolutely unqualified for them. And I have no way of stopping that other than adding negative keywords. Right? But at that point, the money's already spent. But it wants me to turn it on. It wants me to turn on because, hey, there's more out there that you could get. Forget whether it's actually relevant traffic or not.

But there's more out there. Don't you want more traffic? Don't you want AI?

Don't you want AI in your account? I'll tell you what I've been disillusioned to AI's AI's magic.

I find that AI is code word for lazy growth. I find when somebody, when a company says, hey, we've added AI to your account, oh, never mind whether it's actually going to be good for it. It's just a. They've added chrome. They put chrome on top of my crappy part and said it's an improvement. Right? It looks shiny, it sounds cool, but it's trash. I mean, it doesn't actually provide any value in itself.

Use AI long enough and you'll quickly realize this is a really limited tool. And when it's applied on a universal basis across everything, it's absolutely a very useless tool.

So they want to apply AI Max to my search campaigns because they know there's more traffic out there. So that's a 20% boost right there. Absolutely not. I have tried it. AI Max has worked in a very limited capacity for many of my clients.

Okay, let's go through a few more. Let's go through a few more. The next thing that they want me to do is for a 17% boost in my optimization score.

I can set a target CPA to capture upcoming traffic. So it wants me to set a targeted CPA for my account. Now this I'm okay with. I'm not. I'm not against this. But why? Why does this optimize my account? And that's the main topic of what I really want to dig into. Why does my optimization score improve by setting these arbitrary AI Max, maximize conversion value and target CPA bidding to my account? Why.

Does my bidding improve my optimization score? You know what they. You know what I haven't come across yet.

Is they haven't Said, hey, we noticed that you're getting searches for.

Cheap wooden fencing. You need to block those and that will improve your quality score 10%. That is not here, right? I mean, we'll skip ahead a few. It's not here.

It doesn't say, hey, we noticed that your ads perform really poorly after 5pm on the week. On the weekends. We suggest you turn that off. That would improve your optimization score 5%. That is not in here. You know what these look like? Every single one of them are based on expansion. Wider bidding, more AI focused features, more automated bidding things. The next one, I can get an 8% boost if I add broad match keywords to this campaign. Broad match keywords is just a step above AI max. Adding a broad match keyword with automated bidding is almost like writing a blank check.

I mean, we have to assume that Google's gonna immediately start getting traffic. That is.

Quite a way outside of what I'm comfortable with. Why would they need broad match keywords when I told you earlier that my search terms are so clean? I'm not even at the point where I'm having to add negatives. I, I have absolutely obliterated the competitors. Do you know what would happen when I add broad match keywords to this campaign? My search impression share is going to drop. I'm suddenly not going to saturate my important keywords anymore. I'm going to start getting searches that are outside of my scope. So that means my money goes to those and it doesn't go to my important keywords.

Right. That's what broad match keyword does for me. So that, that would be an 8% boost. And I'm starting to see here a pattern.

With the optimization score. Expand your bidding, expand your keywords, expand your targeting that optimizes your account. Not shrink this, lower this, condense this, focus on this. It doesn't say that.

In fact, the next one for a 10% boost is Google wants me to create a performance max campaign. This is absolutely the worst suggestion that it could possibly give me. A performance max campaign will start showing ads on YouTube display, the Discover Network. Discover Network, Discover campaign, which is, you know, just kind of a fancy term for whatever the heck we want to show it on is what that means. Google Maps, Gmail, that's what performance max will start doing. Not Google search. Right. It might show some Google search but really wants, it wants to show it all over the place. You know, who's ready to hire a fence contractor? People who are searching for fence contractors in their area, people who are looking for Specific fence builders, not someone who's checking their Gmail.

That's, that's not what a small business can afford to do. That's, that's not going to boost.

This account's optimization score. That is going to lower my capacity to show on my core keywords. It is going to decrease the efficiency of my account. Yet for some reason, every time.

A suggestion, a recommendation comes up in this account.

Every time it expands my campaign, Google insists that that is an optimization score improvement. So you getting, you getting the idea here. Expansion.

Is optimization growth, reach.

Not, not depth, but width.

Right? We don't want to go deeper into these areas. We want to create a wider, broader aspect of your campaign. That's what optimization is to Google. Okay, and again, this is, this is because Google's interested in selling a product here, right? Your.

Your favorite bakery does, you know, does not want to tell you to start working out more and eating less donuts. They say, well, that's why we have these new less sugar donuts.

So it's, it's, it's not because Google hates you or they're evil, but it's because that's what they're selling. And you have to understand optimization does not mean optimization in the way that you see it. It means optimization for them. So your optimization score means expansion growth and that is often not what you want to do. So creating a performance max campaign would be a detriment to this company.

And then it goes on from there. Probably, you know, some of the worst ones are things like expanding to the Google Search Partners. That's another network out there that is not google.com, i found that Google Search partners are absolutely some of the worst places to show your ads. It is absolutely a breeding place for spam bot international traffic. That is totally irrelevant. It becomes a spam farm.

Thing. I've talked about it many times before, but that's a 3% improvement on my optimization score.

Alright, so that's that, my friends, is what a 29.6 optimization score account looks like. It looks like an account that is doing well. It's succeeding, it's growing, it's expanding, it's adding more locations, it's dominating its market. It's showing up in first position. It's run for years and years and years at a steady capacity and it has a strong conversion rate. The search terms are clean, it dominates the competitors, it's hitting first position a lot. It is running on automated bidding. Great. I mean, it's made several leaps in the phases of Google Ads and Yet Google says it's only at a 29%.

So.

What'S the takeaway here? Do we ignore every single thing that we see in Google Ads? Do we assume that every recommendation is a bad recommendation?

I don't think so. I don't think every recommendation is a bad one.

But I'll tell you, it's few and far between.

It's few and far between that are actually good recommendations. Because let's just do a lightning round of some of these other recommendations and let's see if there's any that I think could be a good idea for this. And real quick, before I do that, optio.com PSP is the special URL that you can get a 28 day free trial of their tool for real optimization [e-mail] PSP.

Okay, let's go through a few more. So here's something that can give me a 1.8% conversion rate or optimization score improvement. Okay? And it wants me to add new keywords.

All right? 1%, 1 to 2% improvement in my optimization score. And I can tell you that these terms are horrible. It's not broad match keywords, but it is phrase match keywords. But these are really bad. I can tell you these because these are not the client, the client's actual terms. I'm not running these. Let me give you a few ideas of what these keywords are. Privacy netting.

I can't even. What the frick is privacy netting?

I mean, is that fishnet hose that women wear? Privacy netting. If you want privacy, you don't put up a net. I don't even know what that is. Privacy netting.

There's another one. Wireless underground fence. So that's, this is something having to do with, I guess, you know, virtual underground kind of invisible fence for dogs. They don't do dog fencing. That's not what they do. But yet a keyword that will improve my optimization score is wireless underground fence. That. That is not what they do. Another one. Underground fencing for pets. Underground fencing for pets. Again, they don't do pet fences. They don't do pet fences. But that's what Google wants me to add. Another one, Wireless fence.

You see where I'm going. I may not have to read all of these, but these are the suggestions. This would improve my optimization score by 2% if I add these completely irrelevant terms. Why? Because that's what the system thinks I want. So it's going to reward me for doing it. And they're trash, they're junk. It would be a waste of money and Anytime you waste money in Google Ads, that means you're losing potential impressions on terms that you should have showed up for. You should have showed up for this term. Instead, the money went to this term over here for a virtual dog fence, a wireless dog fence that. Oh, by the way, you don't do that. Oh, well, anyway, you got the traffic. Hey, congrats. You Optima. You optimized by 2%.

Privacy Privacy Net. You, Someone was looking for privacy netting.

And you got, you got 14 clicks for that. Hey, what is privacy netting? What in the frick does privacy netting even mean? I know you don't do that, but maybe they're interested in your service because they're having a mental breakdown and they typed in something like privacy netting because they think the government's out to get them and they want to put a screen so the aliens can't read their mind. I don't, I don't know what privacy netting is. That's just really funny to me. But that's what this automated optimization system does. It automatically, arbitrarily gives you suggestions to improve your reach, but not improve your performance.

Because in Google's eyes, performance is volume. But in your true optimization.

Making money, getting leads, selling products, getting phone calls. That's what optimization is. So optimization in Google has to do with broadness of reach.

So can you really believe what they have to say? I. I don't think so. I mean, there's, there's one suggestion here that would be A, another 2% boost.

In my optimization score. And it's if I, they give me some suggested.

Headlines to add to my ads. Know what these headlines are? Do you know what this 2% boost is? Literally adding the company's name to my ads. Their suggestion is I can get a 2% boost in my optimization if I put the company's name in the ads.

This is insulting. This is ridiculous. This is so lazy. This is, this AI bullcrap that makes absolutely no sense. Pull. Definitely.

They want to put like these, these, they want to take all these, like pulled learnings of, you know, all these different systems and, and, and thing and saying, well, hey, it helped this company whenever they added their company name to their ads. So we're just going to, maybe that happened a few times and that we're just going to apply it to everyone. So this, this learning system, you know, takes broad strokes and decides this helps everyone. We're gonna, we're gonna apply it everywhere. This is, this is lazy. It's, it's ridiculous. This does not help anyone. Someone seeing Your business name.

In your, in there, in, in your ad does not help them convert. Seeing a business name in an ad does not improve your optimization one bit. Alright, and then they want me to add site more. More site links, whatever. Maybe they want me to use the display expansion. No, they want me to add more. They want me to pause some of my keywords that are quote unquote redundant. So what? I don't care if they're redundant. Show them. If they get clicks, show them. They want me to add a demand gen campaign. They want me to add more videos. They want me to add a business logo. They want me to add Google Video partners.

I don't like any of these and I hate optimization score. I hate optimization score because it leads you down the wrong path. It leads you towards thinking that your campaign is struggling, that it's not working. And on the opposite spectrum you might have 100% optimization score and it might lead you to believe that you are absolutely winning at Google Ads when you absolutely could be failing and wasting money.

So there you go. There is the tale of a 29.6 optimization score in Google Ads and the truth about how I see it and what optimization score in Google Ads really means and how you should interpret it. So I hope this was useful to you. If you'd like to reach out to me to have me take a look at your Google Ads account and give you the real optimization score of your account, chrishaeffer. Com is where you can find me, can book me for a call, an audit, whatever you're looking for. Otherwise I'll catch you guys next week.