Ok, I am officially the most excited person on the planet right now! Today is the first day that I have had access to the new beta Interface for Google AdWords. My first impressions are that it is a hybrid between Google Analytics and Google AdWords Editor (Google’s free offline tool to Create/Edit/Delete campaigns).
As it is still in beta there are a few things that need to be ironed out, such as speed, and our MCC drop down menu having clients in alphabetical order! But, I thought I would put a post together commenting on the massive time saving changes/tweaks that will enable Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms Joe Public gain much better performance from their AdWords campaigns with immediate effect!
1. There is a great Help Section which by default appears on each area of AdWords. Not only that, the help centre is specific to each area you are in. The example below shows the “Help” options you will receive in the Ads section.
Those that are slightly more PPC-savvy – DO NOT FEAR, there is a minimise option if you do not want the interface cluttered with help.
2. Graphical data immediately at your figertips. Those at all familar to Analytics will notice the immediate similarities.
These graphs are available at the Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword and Ad levels.
The beauty of these graphs is that you can far more easily look at trends and potentially find problems that you would not have found without deep analysis of the keyword data.
3. AdWords Editor Style Expandable Navigation of Campaigns and Ad Groups.
This means that navigating between campaigns and ad groups will be significantly quicker and you shouldn’t have issues with page load times. I find this a massively useful tool in AdWords Editor when I am making bulk changes to campaigns.
4. Editing Keywords/Ads within the page you are in.
Eligible status simply means that the keywords are “eligible to show”. I.e that they have a sufficient first place bid, and the search volume is not too low.
YES…THAT’S RIGHT…you will no longer have to be taken to a new page to change bids, keyword match types or ad copy!!! This should be one of the things that saves you the most time on a day to day basis. Simply click into the chosen area that you wish to change, and make the change…that’s it! The first time you make a change in this way, you will see a little yellow box come up. This is just informing you of the consequences or results of your change. This is just Google covering their backs!
5. It is now so much easier to add negative keywords into an account, with the search query report built into each ad group. The search query report which is currently found under Reports, shows the search queries that your ads have actually appeared against. This is great for finding negative seach terms. For example suppose you have the term “fountain pen” on phrase match in your campaign. From running a search query report you see that your ad appeared for “parker fountain pen”. If you do not offer parker fountain pens, then this can be a really quick way of finding that “parker” needs to be added as a negative search term.
From the example above, you can now highlight the terms in the search query report that you wish to add as a negative and click “Add as a negative keyword”. Yes, it is as easy as that! This will ensure that only the highest quality traffic is directed to your site, by not showing your ads against irrelevant searches.
Please note that placement reports (know as URL reports in the new interface) are now available in the Networks tab of all Content Network enabled campaigns. This will allow you to easily see which sites on the content network your ads are appearing on, and like the report above, easily exclude poor performing sites from your campaign. While content targeted campaigns can work very well for some campaigns, If you are at all new to PPC, I would immediately switch them off and concentrate your budget solely on the Search Network. You can then come back to the Content Network when you are better equipped to accurately optimise it. To switch the Content Network off in the new interface please go to the Settings tab and then Edit the Networks and Devices. You will simply need to uncheck the Content Network option and press Save!
Basically there is tonnes of great stuff in the new interface and I have by no means gone through it all. I would be really interested to find out how other people trialling the new interface are finding it.
If anyone has any questions or comments on the new interface, please leave a comment.
Thanks.