The new Account Health Score Beta on Google Adwords?

This week’s guest post features Nick Wonfor, Head of bought media at The Formery. Nick reviews Adwords’ new Account Health tool and score which is currently running in beta. The seasoned Adwords Guru and Digital marketing specialist highlights the pro’s and con’s and advises on how paid search specialists can avoid much grief from clients by setting the expectation.

I work on campaigns running outside of South Africa with a large part of my day spent on clients in the UK and Europe. As a result of this, I’ve had exposure to the Account Health Score tool on Adwords since it was first launched in the UK market several months ago.

Adwords account health tool in a nutshell

If you haven’t seen it yet you can find it under the Opportunities tab in Adwords. Essentially the tool reviews your account in real time and scores you on structure and tool usage. When working on a new account it is an excellent safety net catching anything you might have missed.

All too often in a large account setup, you’ll miss Sitelinks and other extensions or inadvertently forget to populate a group with ads or keywords; this tool will pick that up and let you fix it without having to search. In that respect, it’s amazing, one of the best tools Google has ever given us Adwords users and I use it on every single one of my accounts.

Account Health scores might influence clients’ review of your work

There is a but though. At present I don’t think Google uses the score in any positive or negative way on your account, it’s simply a tool to help paid search experts and hopefully, it stays this way. But, the Account Health Tool is also really pedantic, this isn’t a bad thing if you’re simply using it yourself but will become a problem if your clients begin monitoring your work based on the score.

We have all noticed that there is an innate trust all clients have in what Google advises them and sometimes explaining why something Google describes as a negative is not actually a negative in their case becomes a problem.

This is based on the argument that

“Surely Google knows a lot more about Adwords account management than anyone else” so how could I possibly disagree with them?

Let’s use a realistic scenario that will lose you points with this type of client: When running and optimising any campaign, especially one with conversion tracking in place, you will find that most of the keywords in a group either receive no traffic or do receive traffic but do not contribute towards conversions.

As you work with campaign keywords get paused or deleted until you’ve optimised most group to have between 1 and 3 high-performance terms. The scoring system, however, doesn’t like groups with less than 5 active terms and takes points away if you drop below that threshold.

This is merely annoying if you’re striving for 100% but becomes a problem when your client is pointing at this and asking you to fix it as though it were an actual fault. The above scenario is one of many I have encountered thus far, but all but all my issues with the tool stem from the same place. Not everything that is highlighted as a problem is actually a problem while some, like a mobile unfriendly site, are also not in your power to correct.

Recommendation and setting the standard

You should definitely use this tool as it really is an excellent way to audit your account and fix errors quickly and efficiently. I would also suggest that you show the tool to your client and explain to them why things are the way they are. This will save you a big headache in future when they discover it and wonder why their most important campaign is scored at 91% because you refuse to add more keywords to some ad groups and you haven’t made their site seem more mobile friendly to Adwords.

Nick Wonfor Head of Bought Media at The Formery

More about Nick

About the author

Nick has been around since the dinosaurs first used Yahoo! and Alta Vista to find their way on the internet. He remembers a time when Google didn't offer a display advertising option and YouTube didn't even exist. Man! how old is this guy?!

Tags: Google Adwords, guest post, reviews, Tools