How “Don’t Be Evil” turned into “Do The Right Thing” … (For Google) and why your Google Ads account might be suffering because of it.

Since 2018, Google has slowly but steadily restructured how Google Ads works, shifting from a platform that (at least in theory) helped advertisers and users succeed to one increasingly optimized for maximizing Google’s own revenue. The shift is subtle, technical, and often hidden behind polite-sounding terms like “optimization,” “recommendations,” or “investment strategy.” However, for many advertisers, especially small businesses or those whose goals don’t align perfectly with Google’s, such as in our case, the hyper-local automotive industry, this has worsened over time.

What changed around 2018 and has continued to change:

More data for Google, less for you

In short, Google Ads has become more centralized, automated, and data-driven, increasing efficiency for Google at scale but narrowing control for advertisers. 

• Rebranding & consolidation:  In 2018, Google retired “AdWords” and introduced “Google Ads,” unifying ad buying across search, display, YouTube, Google Play, and its publisher network. Wikipedia
• New UI, less transparency: That same year saw a redesigned interface: older useful tools and features  like “Ad Planner,” “Display Planner,” and certain demographic/placement targeting tools were removed or deprecated. Adalysis
• Rise of automation & machine-learning guidance: Around this time, Google started emphasizing automated bidding (and away from manual control), eCPC-style bidding, and algorithm-driven recommendations. Adalysis
• Shrinking “unknowns,” broader tracking/surveillance: As data-privacy laws tightened (e.g. the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR), Google Ads updated ad-policy rules and compliance requirements, but at the same time started leaning more heavily on collected data, tracking and profiling, making demographic targeting more granular and “useful.” blog.google
• Hiding search-term data from advertisers: Over the past few years, Google has dramatically reduced how much search-query data it reveals to advertisers: many search terms that triggered ads are now shown only as “Other search terms” which are hidden altogether. Estimates suggest Google hides anywhere from 20% to as much as 80% of your search-term data from you. Search Engine Journal

A shift from “help users” to “maximize revenue”

One of the most profound and least visible changes at Google since 2018 is cultural. According to Ed Zitron’s investigative piece The Man Who Killed Google Search, the company underwent a leadership and philosophy shift where the people who once prioritized user experience and neutral search results lost influence to those whose priority was ad revenue.

• Code Yellow 2019: Allegedly, the turning point came around 2019, when internal “code yellow” alerts were raised: the ad & finance teams signaled that search revenue was underperforming, prompting a crisis-mode push to increase monetization. 
• Leadership changed: former ad-business execs (not long-time search engineers) began to run the search and ad divisions. Critics argue this created misaligned incentives: rather than safeguarding search quality and user trust, the priority became boosting ad auctions and revenue.

The levers Google controls and how it manipulates the ad auction more in its favor every year

Because Google controls so many layers of the ad business from search to exchange, from algorithmic auction design to ad-serving infrastructure it has a lot of “knobs” it can turn to shape outcomes in its favor. Some of the key levers revealed (in internal documents and during the United States v. Google LLC / antitrust trial) include:

• Auction redesign to raise ad prices: According to the trial, Google has “tuned” its ad auctions to increase revenue by adjusting rules so that advertisers pay more every year. 
• Withholding information from advertisers: In testimony, a Google ad-executive admitted, “We tend not to tell advertisers about pricing changes.” This means advertisers could end up paying more, in what is no longer a straight auction, without being clearly informed. Search Engine Journal
• Preferencing its own ad-tech stack to squeeze competition: As described in the trial, Google built a vertically integrated stack (search → ad-exchange → ad-server), giving it the power to favor internal products over external rivals when matching supply and demand. Wikipedia
• “Shaking the cushions”  subtle inflation of auction parameters: Testimony during the trial described this practice as internal code for tweaking auction mechanics (“knobs”) to extract more revenue from each ad slot. Search Engine Journal
• Control over supply, bidding, and data imbalance: Because Google controls both ends, what advertisers see and what publishers supply,  it can steer the supply-demand balance to its advantage, often to the detriment of smaller advertisers or publishers. Tech Policy Press

The effect: ad costs rise, competition gets squeezed out, and advertisers (especially smaller ones) end up with less transparency, less control, and worse returns while Google’s revenue continues to grow year after year.

What this means for your shop (or any advertiser)

• When a powerful, profit-driven org runs search + ads + auction + data, the “neutral marketplace” ideal vanishes. You’re playing in a system already rigged in favor of maximum revenue for the operator.
• What appears as small, technical changes (auction tweaks, search page adjustments, algorithmic tweaks, “optimization”) can have major financial impact often without clear signalling or warning.
• Transparency, control, and advertiser trust become collateral damage: even if you follow “best practices” (or Google’s own recommendations), you will likely be paying inflated prices for less value over time.
• The more Google controls, the harder it is for smaller advertisers/publishers to compete because success becomes less about smart marketing and more about how much you feed the machine.

What Google frames as “helpful”

To justify these changes since 2018  and keep advertisers engaged, Google introduced features like:

• Account-level “Recommendations”: a tab within Google Ads where Google suggests changes e.g. “use automated bidding,” “add broad keywords,” “increase budgets,” “add performance max,” etc. Google Business
• Optimization Score: a 0–100% “health score” for your account, meant to reflect how much of Google’s recommendations you’ve applied, and whether your account looks “optimized.” Instapage
• Account-level “Investment Strategy”: a system designed to get you to spend more money by reframing marketing spend as “investment.” Google
• Encouraging adoption of automated bidding and other “smart” tactics often presented as the quickest path to better results. Adalysis 
• Encouraging agency adoption of features by creating a rewards platform Partner Rewards

On paper, these features aim to help advertisers. However, many in the ad community, especially agencies, argue that they now serve more to help Google’s bottom line than to support advertisers’ success.

Automatic Google Recommendations ≠ your goals, they = Google’s

Google’s recommendations are generated by algorithmic logic rooted in maximizing the revenue per ad (or how much you spend with them), not necessarily your bottom line. A recommendation to “add search partners” or “expand keyword lists” could steer you toward more clicks, but not necessarily more conversions or actual business value. This is especially true in our industry, where you may be geographically limited, have a query-limited niche, or be budget-constrained.

Simply put: If you have a 25% optimization score, but you’re meeting your Goal’s that’s great. But if you have a 99% optimization score, and you’re not, you’ve failed.

Thus, blindly following every recommendation can lead to wasted spend, misaligned targeting, and ad fatigue just to keep Google (and its machine) happy.

Optimization Score pressures & “partner” incentives

With the overhaul of the Google Partner Program (announced in 2020, rolled out in 2021), Google started making “being a certified partner” contingent on meeting certain thresholds: a minimum account-level spend, a minimum percentage of certified users, and a minimum Optimization Score (70%). Search Engine Roundtable

We decided to drop out of the agency program at this point. Instead of rewarding agencies for delivering real results for clients like growth, conversions, or loyalty, what matters now is hitting Google’s internal benchmarks, mainly revenue. Even an agency with mediocre client results could still qualify simply by doing what Google’s algorithm recommends by letting the system automatically apply changes.

Loss of control & transparency

Even the calculation of the Optimization Score is opaque. Google says, “Optimization score is an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. Scores run from 0-100%, with 100% meaning that your account can perform at its full potential, ” but the exact formulas and weighting remain secret. Google Optimization Score

Additionally, you can raise your optimization score by simply dismissing the suggestions.

The Optimization Score Problem. Real-World Results vs. Google’s “Suggestions”

In the example shown below, the account isn’t bidding on its own brand name and is optimized for meaningful outcomes like booked appointments and calls lasting more than 60 seconds. Over the past 30 days, it’s been generating those leads at $12.86 each, well below the typical $20–35 range we see for similar multi-location shops.

By any real-world standard, this is excellent performance.

Yet Google assigns the account an Optimization Score of just 25.1%, noting an 18% decline.

If the score reflected actual business results, it would be close to 100%.

 Instead, the score is low because Google is pushing recommendations that don’t make sense for the strategy, constraints, or economics of the account, including:

• +12.9% for raising the budget(split across three different suggestions to do this), even though the budget is purposefully capped and the account already spends its full allocation.
• +8.1% for adding broad-match keywords, despite the business not offering every service Google would match to, which would worsen call quality.
• +20.2% for enabling AI Max for Search, still in beta, is unnecessary for a stable, low-cost campaign with limited services.
• +7.9% for enabling dynamic sitelinks, which is not useful for a multi-location brand with tailored, local landing pages that send users to the wrong location or a find location page.

None of these suggestions improves marketing performance. They simply raise spending volatility, reduce targeting precision, or hand more control to the algorithm that’s built for national, not local. For a campaign already hitting strong, low-cost leads, what’s needed is consistency and predictability, not more automation or broader targeting.

What this means for our industry and what to watch out for

What these changes reveal is a broader shift in priorities. Once, Google Ads (and before it, AdWords) felt like a tool designed to help businesses, big or small, grow based on their merits. Today, the system increasingly nudges (or even pushes) advertisers to feed more money into Google’s auction and auction-driven machine. We caution that:

• You don’t treat every Google recommendation as gospel. Evaluate each on whether it aligns with your objectives, conversions, profit margin, or brand recognition lift, not just clicks, impressions, or spend.
• A high Optimization Score does not guarantee your ads are profitable or effective. It only means you satisfied Google’s algorithmic checklist for an average advertiser.
• If you work with an agency, don’t assume that being a “Google Partner” means “top-level performance.” Sometimes it means “they hit Google’s internal quotas and checklists.”
• You keep control over your strategy. If you care about long-term growth, customer value, and targeting quality, you might need to ignore or override Google’s “optimizations” for what’s best for your business.

Much of the “helpful guidance” is less about helping your business and more about increasing ad volume, which, of course, boosts Google’s revenues. For smaller businesses, or advertisers with goals that diverge from Google’s “traditional national advertiser” playbook, that can mean wasted spend, deteriorating real-world performance, and frustration.

In that sense, the ideal of “Don’t Be Evil” has quietly evolved into “Do The Right Thing… (For Google).”