Google is Changing the “Remove redundant keywords” Recommendations
If you’re an advertiser, chances are, you may have received an email from Google about them outlining their new policy regarding redundant keywords.
What’s the update about?
To explain briefly, the “Remove redundant keywords” which you can see on your recommendations tab suggest redundant keywords that are found within the same ad groups. Starting January 19, this recommendation will include keywords across different match types.
This means Google is going to start removing redundant keywords in phrase and exact match keywords as well in favor of broad matches.
Why are they doing this change?
According to Google’s email, this is why:
Redundant keywords are equivalent to higher-performing keywords or keywords in broader match types. Removing these redundant keywords and consolidating your keywords across match types will help you manage your account more easily. It doesn’t negatively impact your performance, and still allows your ads to appear on the same searches.
What steps should you take from here?
Before this update takes effect, we recommend you turn off auto-apply in your recommendations. You can do this in Google ads and even in your editor.
It also helps to review Google’s recommendations guidelines that you can read and review here.
Additionally, you can read Google’s email regarding the update for “Remove redundant keywords:
Improvements to ‘Remove redundant keywords’ recommendation
Dear Google Ads customer,
You’re receiving this message because you have opted into automatically applying the ‘Remove redundant keywords’ recommendation for your account(s) (xxx-xx-xxxx), and we are making some improvements to this recommendation type.
What’s changing?
Currently, the ‘Remove redundant keywords’ recommendation suggests redundant keywords within the same ad groups, destination, bidding strategy, and match type. Starting January 19, the recommendation can include keywords across different match types. To view match type reports, click ‘Segment’ on ‘Search keywords’ report, and choose ‘Search terms match type’. You can learn more about this recommendation on our Help Center.
Why are we making this update?
Redundant keywords are equivalent to higher-performing keywords or keywords in broader match types. Removing these redundant keywords and consolidating your keywords across match types will help you manage your account more easily. It doesn’t negatively impact your performance, and still allows your ads to appear on the same searches.
As an example for how this would work, if your ad group has the phrase match keyword “women’s hats” and broad match keyword ladies hats, we will recommend that you remove the phrase match keyword since the broad match keyword ladies hats covers all Searches from “women’s hats”
How can I turn off automatically applying recommendations for this type?
On Editor:
- Navigate to the ‘Manage’ section and search for ‘Recommendations’.
- Select ‘Auto-apply’.
- Click the ‘Remove redundant keywords’ recommendation.
- Click Disable.
- Post changes.
On Google Ads front end:
You can disable automatically applied recommendations at any time from either of these tabs:
The ‘Manage’ tab
- Uncheck the ‘Remove redundant keywords’ recommendation.
- Click Save.
The ‘History’ tab
- Click the ‘Remove redundant keywords’ recommendation.
- Click Disable.
We’re here to help
If you have any questions about this upcoming change, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your account team, or contact us at any time.
Sincerely,
The Google Ads Team