Tuning a noisy or silent rule

A rule is too noisy

Work through these in order:

1. Raise the threshold - a higher multiple, a bigger σ, a larger materiality percentage.

2. Raise the reliability floor - minimum impressions/conversions/spend, so thin data can't fire it.

3. Lengthen the hold - require the problem to persist longer before alerting.

4. Use the guardrails - e.g. the disapproval rule's policy-topic allowlist for expected policy reasons, or the network-leak whitelist for deliberate opt-ins.

5. Check the live estimate where available - dial until "would have fired" looks sane.

A rule never fires

• Check it's toggled on (PMax placement quality ships off by default).

• Check the reliability floors - an account below the minimum spend/impressions/conversions can't trigger.

• For security rules, check the trusted baseline - if everyone's already on the known list, silence is success.

• Remember cooldowns - a standing issue that already alerted won't re-alert until its cooldown ends.

Example. CPA spike firing weekly on a low-volume campaign is almost always the conversions floor set too low - at 5+ baseline conversions the CPA figure is trustworthy and the noise stops.

Good to know. Silence is the normal state. A well-tuned system is quiet most days - that's the system working, not the system broken.