Google Ads provides advertisers with hundreds of metrics for evaluating ad performance. It can sometimes be overwhelming to sort through all the available metrics and figure out the ones that are most important to include in your data tables.
To simplify reporting options, Google Ads has added in a new recommended columns feature. Based on your existing account settings, Google Ads may recommend certain columns in the data table that will help you analyze your campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords.
For example, if you start using bid automation, Google will recommend the ‘Bid Strategy Type’ column to your Campaign table. When a column is recommended in your account, it will automatically appear in your table. You will know that it’s a recommended column because the column name will have a dotted blue line underneath.
Recommended columns can be added or removed at the user level, meaning that when you make a change it will only be reflected in your preferences and other users in the account will still see the recommended columns until they modify them.
How To Add Recommended Columns
You can view recommended columns by clicking the columns button to modify your table. You will be able to see a list of all recommended columns for that report under your column set. Additionally, the “Recommended columns” dropdown section will contain all of the enabled and disabled recommended columns.
Columns with an empty checkbox are recommended columns that you have turned off, and columns with a blue checkbox are recommended columns that you’ve enabled. You can check all the recommended columns that you would like to add to your report.
To permanently add a recommended column to your table, you can drag it from the bottom position of your column set on the right-hand side above the divider line. Once a recommended column has been added to your permanent set of columns, the blue dotted line underneath it will disappear.
You can do three things with the recommended columns.
- Do nothing, and Google will recommend the column whenever it’s relevant
- Add them as permanent columns
- Tell Google not to recommend it anymore
These recommendations are turned on by default for all advertisers. You can turn off recommendations for individual columns or all columns. These settings are specific to the user in the account.
How To Remove Recommended Columns
You can remove recommended columns by hovering over the column with a dotted blue line and click “Don’t show this column” from the pop-up box.
You can also click to modify the columns and disable all column recommendations by switching off the toggle next to “Show recommended columns in your table.”
At this point, I’m leaving recommended columns on because I’m interested to see what Google ads recommends. If I start to find the recommendations to not be very helpful, I’ll likely turn this option off in the future.
Have you tried out this feature yet? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section!
