Notes are coming to AdWords, plus Recommendations & an Account Performance Score

Over the past several months, Google has been rolling out new features exclusively in the new AdWords interface, or “experience.” On Tuesday, at SMX West in San Jose, AdWords Director of Product Management Anthony Chavez announced some attention-grabbing new features aimed at improving productivity on the platform.

Let’s start with a long-desired addition first.

Quickly see what caused performance changes with Notes

How many times have you looked at a chart in AdWords, seen a spike or dip in performance and had to go digging in the account, or even somewhere else, for an explanation? How many times have you wished you could mark significant changes, campaign launches on other channels and more in AdWords just as you can in Google Analytics? Well, now you can — with Notes.

Notes in AdWords can be created directly in the new UI and will be visible to all other users that have access to an account. Notes are captured below the performance graph area (just like in Google Analytics), and a Notes column on the right can be expanded as needed to view multiple entries in detail.

Notes are available at any level of an account and will be rolling out in the following weeks.

Users can finally create notes and comments right in AdWords.

Prioritize optimizations with Recommendations

Google revamped the Opportunities tab in the new AdWords interface in November. Now the page has a new name — Recommendations — and new features. The aim is to be more assistive in the suggestions AdWords gives advertisers for optimizing their campaigns and improving performance.

The newly renamed Recommendations page features 16 new types of suggestions.

There are now 16 new types of recommendations that can surface on the page — all specifically tailored to an account. Because they are customized, users won’t see every kind of opportunity, and sometimes, they may see none at all.

A full list of the new recommendations can be found here. They include adding new ad suggestions, adding ads to ad groups, adding audiences, pausing poorly performing keywords, removing non-serving keywords and more.

The recommendations page “is meant to be a time saver to educate users on areas of improvement to drive better results,” Chavez said in an interview last week.

Account Performance Score

Another update to the Recommendations page will soon be the addition of a new Account Performance Score. The Account Performance Score is essentially a visual representation of where the biggest optimization opportunities are and where advertisers should focus their efforts. To be clear, this score has nothing to do with quality score, ad rank or the auction itself.

The score will be integrated into the Recommendations experience. You might recall that Google briefly tested an Account Health Score for Search in 2016 on the Opportunities tab. The new Account Performance Score is in that same vein, tied directly to performance recommendations.

“It is designed to be a meaningful indicator of the best ways users can improve their accounts. It’s very actionable and connects directly to the recommendations that get surfaced,” said Chavez.

How this will be presented on the page isn’t clear yet, but Chavez says more details will be coming soon.

The Recommendations page will be rolling out in the very near future, and the Account Performance Score will be available in accounts in the coming weeks.

Google also announced new direct-response marketing features that enable advertisers to leverage search intent on YouTube.

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