There is a flipside to the page that comes into play from my perspective. Now obviously not every person advertising or using Google Ads will frequently use this tool but let’s say that a vast majority do.
If you manage several accounts you will see how much variation there is in the information you receive, depending upon which business you are viewing. The data and trends truly reflect the individual businesses and the history of the ad accounts themselves.
Insights are readily available
Insights are truly unique to each account
Potential cons of the Google Ads Insights page
The Google Ads Insights page is conveniently located in the main menu of your Google Ads account under the recommendations tab:
The page may give you some ideas or show trends that may be worth capitalizing on, but for an experienced marketer, they will likely find many of the trends and recommendations generally unhelpful.
The beauty of paid search is that it is constantly evolving. There are search terms that will consistently provide volume every month but in many cases new queries emerge as information and trends develop.
This may seem like a cynical perspective but I feel it is necessary to point out that although many of Google’s recommendations may be helpful, most of them will try to persuade you to spend more money.
Get ahead of competitors
With constant changes to the platform (particularly to keyword match types) any additional information or data that can be analyzed is welcome in my opinion. Google has been pushing more and more automation in search over the past few years and although some of it has been helpful, much of it has taken the high level of control that marketers had to make decisions and fine-tune campaigns. The Insights page is a refreshing addition to the platform that isn’t a dramatic change that will upset any applecarts.
From the start, you are presented with a broad overview of trends that you show ads for as well as suggested trends for your business. You can get a deeper look into the report by selecting “View Trend Details” in the bottom right of the window:
How to use the Google Ads Insights page
Some accounts don’t have them
Not the best fit for every account
So is the Google Ads Insights page helpful?
I have also found that not every Google Ad account will have active trends and insights. For some businesses you will be shown this window:
Push toward more spending
Finally, while search trends provide a great deal of opportunity from an advertising perspective, some industries will derive more value from the Insights page than others.
In a way, this tool doesn’t just allow you to keep up with consumers, but also to get ahead of competitors. For example, Google notes that “searches for ‘curbside pickup’ increased by over 3000%” during the pandemic. Businesses who were relevant to this query would have been able to capitalize by targeting these keywords before the competition caught on to the trend.
With everyone using it, can you really get ahead?
If all of these competitors are using the tool and increasing their spend towards “trending terms,” then the party that will benefit the most would be Google. It’s in every business’s best interest to increase revenue wherever possible, but it seems Google has been blurring the lines between “helping you grow your business” and helping their bottom line for quite some time now.
Recommendations aren’t necessarily optimizations
It’s been a busy past few months for Google Ads updates. The tech giant has been making several tweaks to various aspects of its platform in an overall attempt to make the product more accessible to businesses looking to advertise.
As mentioned above, the fact that this information is readily available within your account is valuable enough. You don’t have to use the Insights page if you don’t wish to but it is always there to inspect.
As with many auto-generated recommendation tools released by Google to help marketers grow their business, there are some great advantages and some not-so-great.
Try out the Google Ads Insights page to see if it’s right for your business
To add to these technical changes, Google has released its new Insights page from beta.
