Does Google Ads Optimisation Score Matter?

Ella Pybus | 5 December, 2025 | 5 minute read | Blog, PPC

Chasing a 100% optimisation score will not magically fix your Google Ads.

If you’ve ever logged into your account, seen that big percentage at the top and wondered, “Should I be worried this isn’t at 100%?”, you’re not alone. The Google Ads Optimisation Score is a percentage (0–100%) that estimates how well your account is set to perform in Google’s eyes, based on your settings, stats, and the recommendations in your account.

It’s prominent. It’s colour-coded. It’s pushed by Google reps. So of course people start treating it like a KPI.

In this blog, we’ll unpack what Google Ads Optimisation Score actually is (and what it isn’t), how it’s calculated, when it genuinely helps, and when you should happily ignore it and focus on real business results instead.

What is Google Ads Optimisation Score really telling you?

At a basic level, the optimisation score is Google’s estimate of how well your account is set up according to Google’s own best practices.

It does not tell you:

• How profitable your campaigns are
• Whether your leads are any good
• If your targeting actually matches your ideal customer

It simply tells you how closely your account aligns with the changes and features Google is recommending right now.

How Google calculates the score

Google doesn’t share the full formula (surprise), but we know a few key things from their documentation and from experience:

• Real-time data – Your optimisation score updates as your stats, bids, budgets and settings change. Apply or dismiss recommendations, and the score moves almost instantly.
• Account settings & structure – Things like your bidding strategy, daily budgets, campaign types, and conversion actions all feed into the score.
• Campaign & account performance – Google uses historical performance, trends, and predictive modelling to estimate the impact each recommendation could have.
• Recommendation history – The score also takes into account how you’ve treated past recommendations, applied, ignored, or dismissed.

Basically, follow more of Google’s suggestions and your score goes up. Dismiss or ignore them, then your score stays lower.

Want to learn more about getting the basics right? Read our blog: What is a Google Ads Agency?

Does optimisation score actually matter for performance?

It matters a bit – but nowhere near as much as your results.

You can have:

• A 65% optimisation score and a highly profitable, tightly targeted account.
• A 98% optimisation score and a money pit full of broad match keywords, irrelevant search terms and poor-quality leads.

Why? Because the optimisation score shows how well you’re following Google’s recommendations, not how well you’re hitting your commercial goals.

Some recommendations are useful:

• Fixing tracking issues
• Removing conflicting negatives
• Improving the quality score of responsive search ads
• Surfacing obvious wasted spend

Others are… less aligned with your priorities, for example:

• Aggressively raising budgets
• Switching everything to broad match overnight
• Adding dozens of auto-suggested keywords that don’t match your ideal customer
• Opting into extra networks you don’t want to pay for

When to pay attention vs when to ignore it

Here’s how we suggest thinking about optimisation score in day-to-day management.

Pay attention when:

• The score suddenly drops, and you’ve made big structural changes; it can highlight setup issues you’ve missed.
• You’re onboarding a new account that’s never had proper management, and the recommendations can surface quick wins and obvious fixes.
• You’re checking the basics, things like missing extensions, limited budgets, or broken tracking often appear here.

Happily ignore it when:

• Your ROI is strong and stable; don’t rip up a profitable structure just to jump from 82% to 100%.
• Recommendations clash with your strategy, for example, you don’t want to target every country or every device, even if Google suggests it.
• You’re being nudged into spending you can’t justify, “Raise your budget by 40%” is a suggestion, not a command.

Our final thoughts 

So, does Google Ads Optimisation Score matter? Yes,  but only in context.

It’s:

• A useful health check when you inherit or audit an account
• A handy checklist for tidying up missed basics
• A starting point for ideas to test

If you’d like to get more from your Google Ads Optimisation Score without being ruled by it, explore more of our Google Ads insights and resources, they’re designed to help you make smarter, data-driven decisions, not just chase platform metrics.

At ROAR Digital Marketing, we also don’t obsess over old-school metrics like keyword density, and we certainly don’t write content just to stuff “Google Ads Optimisation Score” into a paragraph ten times. Other agencies still do it this way. We’d rather focus on search intent, message match and user experience that actually drives leads and sales.

Whenever you’re ready to look beyond the numbers on the dashboard and build campaigns around real business outcomes, our blogs and resources are a good place to start.