Making large-scale changes faster and easier in AdWords

Have you ever needed to adjust your AdWords bids by 5% for several thousand keywords? Or had to find and replace a bit of text in your ad copy across a couple hundred ads? Maybe you’ve changed your web address and need to update all of your visible URLs and destination URLs across your account.

We love making AdWords faster, simpler and more beautiful. So I’m happy to announce our new bulk editing features in the AdWords interface. With these tools, you’ll be able to more quickly and easily make large-scale changes across your entire account.

Initial preview
Initially, we’re releasing these bulk editing features to a limited number of AdWords accounts to collect your feedback and ensure everything works as expected. We hope to expand availability to everyone in the coming weeks.

Update (Dec. 4, 2012): These features are now available in all AdWords accounts globally.

Do more, quickly and easily
Here's a summary of the kinds of changes you'll be able to make.

Keywords	Search and replace text in the keyword or destination URL Append text to the keyword or destination URL Set new bids, including increasing to first page or top of page CPC Increase or decrease bids Change keyword match types Add/remove labels
Ads	Search and replace text in the ad or URL Append text to the ad or URL Change the capitalization of the text Add/remove labels
Ad Groups	Increase or decrease bids Set new bids Add/remove labels
Campaigns	Increase or decrease budgets Set new budgets Add/remove labels

You’ll be able to preview changes before you apply them. If you’re making a lot of changes, they’ll run in the background. That means you can leave the page and do other things in your account (or even log out entirely!) while bulk changes are in progress. A progress bar lets you know how close your changes are to completion. You can review your changes after they’re done.

Below is an example of how easy it is to change “Road bike” to “Commuter bike” in over 25,000 ads with a single click.



Keeping things simple
As these new editing features become available in AdWords, you might also notice a few changes to buttons and menus to reduce redundancy and keep things simple for new users.

The “Edit” button will become an “Edit” drop-down menu. We’ll also be phasing out the “Edit in table” view since its multi-item editing capabilities will be far surpassed. Now when making a change to an individual campaign element, you can just click on it to enter editing mode.

More details and feedback
We’ll be updating articles throughout the AdWords help center, including our AdWords glossary entry on bulk edits, as we roll out these new editing features.

Please share your comments about the new bulk editing features with us if you use them over the next few weeks. Your feedback helps us make AdWords even better.

Posted by Prashant Baheti, AdWords Product Manager

Model bid changes at scale with campaign bid simulator

When we launched bid simulator in 2009, we wanted to make it easy for you to understand the impact of bids on your advertising results. Until now, you’ve been able to access bid simulator at the keyword and ad group level.

To allow you to more easily simulate and apply bid changes at scale, we’re pleased to announce the launch of campaign bid simulator.

To access campaign bid simulator, go to the Opportunities tab and select “campaign bid simulator” from the left navigation tree.

With campaign bid simulator, you can:

• View bid changes in aggregate and model changes even when keywords or ad groups might not have enough data for this on their own. 
• See what might happen if you increased or decreased all your bids by a specific percentage (10%, for example). 
• See whether you may need to increase your campaign budget to ensure it doesn’t become limited by budget at the new bid value. 
• Model what happens if you changed all your bids in the campaign to a single value. 
• Download the bid-simulation data at the account or campaign level. 
• Download an AdWords Editor-compatible file with bid amounts at the simulated level and the ad groups and keywords to which they should be applied. 

Note: this is mock data only and should not be seen as a real or accurate simulation

For more information, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Sheridan Kates, Product Manager, AdWords

Diagnose ads faster with new status insights icon

This week we're introducing a status insights icon in the Ads tab that provides visibility into the approval status and potential policy limitations for each individual ad creative. The new icon will be particularly valuable if you’re advertising products or services that are restricted by our advertising policies to show only in specific countries or with certain keywords.

To use the new status icon, simply hover over the speech bubble in the Status column of the Ads tab next to the ad of interest:


We’ll tell you if the individual ad is showing for the default keyword and location displayed in the hover. If you would like to re-diagnose the ad with with a different targeted location or keyword, you can edit the parameters from right within the hover:


This new icon complements the existing ad diagnosis tools, which include the status hover on the Keywords tab, a batch option to diagnose many keywords at once, and the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

The Keyword Tool - when you talk, we listen

We want to thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us on the Keyword Tool. The first thing you told us is that you want more keywords that are better targeted to your account and searches, and we’ve made improvements in this area. We’ve also added features such as better filters, the ability to star keywords, and copy them as text. And we’re not done yet! You can help us understand what’s important to you by continuing to provide us with feedback. Below is a more detailed look at some of our new features.

There are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list. With our new updates, you can:

1. Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list.
2. Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you've selected from the table.
3. Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box.

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Adding stars to keywords
Add stars to keywords that you'd like to save while you're still searching for new keyword ideas. You can review your starred keywords in the "Stars" panel on the left side of the tool.

‘View as text’ button
View your selected keywords in text form, so that you can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor.

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Your continued feedback is important, so please keep sending us your comments and we'll post about more improvements here.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Reaching for the top spot? "Estimated Top Impressions" now available in the Bid Simulator

A year ago, we launched the Bid Simulator, a feature that allows you to see how different keyword-level bids may have impacted your advertising results. Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of clicks and impressions your ad could have received with different maximum CPC bids.

Today we’re announcing a new metric in Bid Simulator, “Estimated Top Impressions,” which shows you how many times your ad appeared above the search results in the past seven days and how this metric could have changed had you used different keyword level maximum CPC bids.

Access the Bid Simulator by clicking the icon next to your maximum CPC bid.

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Whether you carefully manage a handful of valuable keywords or simply want users to see your ad as often as possible, Estimated Top Impressions can be a useful metric. Ads that appear above the search results are more visible to users and tend to receive more clicks than ads that appear along the right side of the search results page.

Let's look at an example of how to use the Estimated Top Impressions column:

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In this table, the current maximum CPC bid of $1.07 captures most of the impressions that a higher bid of $1.93 could have captured (7,520 vs. 7,930). However, when we look at the ‘Estimated Top Impressions’ column, we see that the current bid of $1.07 only captures a fraction of the top impressions (4,780 vs. 6,380). Increasing the bid to $1.93 would have placed the ad at the top of the search results page for many more queries, resulting in more users seeing the ad and clicking through to the site (591 vs 662).

If one of your goals is to appear in the top position and you’ve been focusing on the ‘average position’ of your ad to gauge how prominently it’s displayed to users, Estimated Top Impressions may be a better metric for you to focus on. While average position indicates where your ad is appearing in relation to other ads on the page, it doesn’t indicate whether your ad is appearing above the search results or on the right side of the page.

Note that past performance does not guarantee future results, and simulations will only be provided if there is enough traffic on a given keyword to conduct a meaningful analysis. Additionally, top of page impressions are counted only for impressions on Google, since other sites within the Search Network may display ads differently. Estimated Top Impressions data is currently only available in the Bid Simulator, and we’re working to incorporate this metric into more AdWords reports.

For an in-depth look at bidding, check out this tutorial from Hal Varian, the Google Chief Economist: Bidding Strategy Overview.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Updated Keyword Tool: Out of Beta

In early August, we announced that the updated Keyword Tool was nearing the end of its beta phase. Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve fully launched the updated Keyword Tool.

What does that mean for you? It means we’ve combined the best features from two previous keyword tools into one. The previous Keyword Tool and Search-based Keyword Tool are no longer available in AdWords. The updated Keyword Tool is now the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, so you can now simply call it “The Keyword Tool.”

The Keyword Tool’s benefits include:

• Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results.
• Easy Keyword Refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type.
• Negative keywords: Easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop-down menu to select and save your negative keyword.
• Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, search and ad share, and more.

In addition to these improvements, we’ve also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners. We've updated these statistics based on advertiser feedback, and hope you find them more helpful for keyword selection.

While we recommend using the Keyword Tool while signed in to AdWords, you can also access the tool without signing in. We hope you like the new streamlined version of the tool and we look forward to bringing you more features soon.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

Improved keyword diagnosis -- no appointments necessary

"Are my ads showing? If they aren't, why not?"

Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing is a top priority. Now you can get detailed diagnostic information for multiple keywords at once by using a new keyword diagnosis option on the Keywords tab.

To get started, open the "More actions" menu on your Keywords tab (at the account, campaign, or ad group level) and select "Diagnose keywords."

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On the keyword diagnosis menu, you have all the options available in the standalone Ads Diagnostic Tool. For example, if you're interested in seeing whether or not your ad is showing in a particular location, you can use the Location drop-down to narrow the scope of your diagnosis.

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After clicking "Run test," you'll see the real-time results appear in the Status column next to each keyword. If all is well, you see "Ad showing." If not, you'll see a brief summary of the problem (for example, "Low bid or quality score"):

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To get more details on a keyword's status, hover over any speech bubble icon. In the above example, viewing details for the keyword "meeting icebreakers" displays more information on the Quality Score issues that are preventing the ad from showing. To focus on one issue at a time, try creating filters for Keyword Status.

The next time your keywords need a check-up, try using keyword diagnosis -- it even makes house calls!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Get a crash course on AdWords reporting tools

It’s hard to fix a problem when you don’t know it exists. That’s why the reporting tools available in AdWords are so important. Features like segmentation, filters, and custom alerts let you move through your campaigns like a shadow in the night, spotting potential issues and taking action quickly.

We’ve just released Find new insights in AdWords data, an AdWords Online Classroom course that will help you make the most of AdWords reporting tools.

In a little over 20 minutes, you’ll learn how to focus on the right statistics, find and take action on your key performance drivers, and monitor your campaigns regularly to ensure that no change in an important metric goes unnoticed. Before viewing the course, you'll need to complete a free registration.

So watch this short lesson and learn some advanced strategies for evaluating your account. Your campaigns will thank you!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network

Over the past year, we've focused on building new solutions on the Google Content Network for campaigns focused on branding. Last year we introduced frequency capping to help you manage how often your Content Network campaigns reach the right people. We then launched an “above the fold” filter to allow you to show ads only in places that appear on potential customers’ screens when the page loads. We also developed innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns.

Today, in response to feedback from many of you who run branding campaigns, we're announcing a new filter that allows you to show your ads only on AdSense sites among the 1000 largest on the web, as defined by DoubleClick Ad Planner. This new feature will ensure that your ads reach a large number of users, but only on well-known sites best suited for branding goals.

To activate the new filter, select ‘non Ad Planner 1000’ within the ‘category filters’ section of your AdWords account. Keep in mind that not all sites in the Ad Planner 1000 are in the Google Content Network and that your ads will only show on those sites that are.

It's important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products. Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals.

We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Target CPA Bidding: A new way to meet your ROI goals with Conversion Optimizer

Today we’re announcing a new enhancement to Conversion Optimizer: Target CPA Bidding. With Target CPA Bidding, you can set a bid that reflects the average amount you’d like to pay for a conversion rather than the maximum you’re willing to pay for it.

We launched Conversion Optimizer in 2007 as a tool to improve your campaign ROI. Conversion Optimizer analyzes your conversion tracking data and automatically adjusts your bids for each auction. Over the past few years, we’ve been pleased to hear from a number of you that you've seen significant ROI improvements after implementing Conversion Optimizer. In fact, analysis indicates that, on average, those of you who use the tool experience a 21% increase in conversions along with a 14% decrease in CPA.*

This latest update to Conversion Optimizer was made in response to your feedback. We’ve heard from many of you that you’re more accustomed to thinking in terms of a target or average CPA when it comes to managing your online advertising (as opposed to the Max CPA bids which the tool has historically required). We hope that having the additional Target CPA bidding option will make it even easier for you to boost your AdWords ROI. Of course, if you’re happy using Max CPA bids with your Conversion Optimizer campaigns, then there’s no need to make any changes to your campaigns.

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To enable Target CPA bidding, visit the Settings tab in your account, select ‘Focus on Conversions,’ and click ‘Advanced Options.’ Note that Conversion Optimizer is only available for campaigns that have implemented conversion tracking and have received at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

*This analysis compares the performance of Conversion Optimizer campaigns over the course of a year with a control set of campaigns and represents the average impact of Conversion Optimizer. The actual impact will vary from campaign to campaign.

More relevant traffic estimates now in the updated Keyword Tool

In late September, we launched a beta version of the updated Keyword Tool. This tool is a new, streamlined way for you to identify additional keywords and add them to your account. Previously, we offered two distinct tools to expand your keyword list. The Keyword Tool generated keywords based on the content of the URL, words or phrases you entered into the tool. The Search-based Keyword Tool gave you insight into keywords that you may have been missing out on by identifying actual Google searches that were relevant to your site’s landing pages. Now, with the updated Keyword Tool, you can search by words or phrases, websites, and even categories (where available) to receive the results of both the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool in one central location.

Our beta launch began what will eventually be a permanent transition from the previous Keyword Tool to the updated version. Over the next few months, you'll be able to switch back and forth between the two tools as needed. We'll post again on this blog when the transition period is over. At that point, the updated Keyword Tool will be the only version available in your account.

In the meantime, as you get accustomed to the updated version, we'll continually improve it and add functionality that we hope you'll find useful. Over the next few days, we're adding a new feature to the tool that will help you get more relevant search traffic estimates for your keywords.

To do this, you'll select specific keywords from the list of suggestions and click on the 'Estimate Search Traffic' button.

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From there, you can choose the ad group to which you'd like to add those keywords and see the average estimated CPC, total estimated clicks, and total estimated cost for the keywords you selected on the previous screen.

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This enhancement enables you to see how your keywords might perform in a specific ad group. Keyword traffic estimates in the context of an ad group can look at the interactions between keywords, and can give you a more accurate prediction of performance than you'd see from a full list of keywords.

It's important to note that due to these changes, we're removing some columns that you had previously been able to add to your Keyword Tool results: Estimated Avg. CPC, Estimated CTR, Estimated Ad Position, Estimated Impressions, Estimated Clicks, and Estimated Cost. While you won't be able to access these columns in the updated version, you'll still be able to see much of this information in the context of an ad group. If you're interested in seeing keyword-level search traffic estimates, you can do so through the standalone Traffic Estimator tool, which also has a new, more intuitive interface. To access the Traffic Estimator tool, click on the 'More Tools' link under the 'Tools' section of your Opportunities Tab.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

New Reports: AdWords Search Funnels

In order to help you make more informed decisions about your AdWords keywords, ad groups, and campaigns, we're excited to release a new set of reports for your AdWords account: AdWords Search Funnels (beta). Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad someone clicks before making a conversion, masking the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting. AdWords Search Funnels help you see the full picture by giving you insight into the ads your customers interact with during their shopping process.

What are AdWords Search Funnels?

AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion. In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. For an overview of these new reports, check out this video:

Why are these useful?

"Search Funnel enables us to create a better experience for our customers by helping us understand how they search for our products," said Beth Hirschhorn, Chief Marketing Officer from MetLife, the largest life insurance company based in the United States. "It is an important tool to help de-code consumer shopping habits and thought processes, which we can relate back to our online as well as offline advertising."

By showing which ads your customers clicked on before ultimately converting, Search Funnels give a more complete picture of the value of your keywords, ad groups and campaigns. Let's look at a hypothetical example.

An online vacation service called Flyaway Vacations is running AdWords campaigns for vacation packages in Hawaii. Their ads link to a site where visitors can book any or all parts of a package that includes flights, a hotel, car rental, and surf lessons. Suppose that on March 10 someone searched for "hawaii vacation" and clicked on an ad for Flyaway's Hawaii package. A click was registered in their AdWords account. Then, two days later, the same person searched for "flights to hawaii" and saw another ad for Flyaway, but didn't click. An impression was registered in Flyaway's AdWords account. Finally, three days later, the same person searched one more time, this time for "flyaway hawaii." This time they clicked the ad, visited the site, and purchased the Hawaii vacation package.

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Instead of showing only a purchase conversion for the "flyaway hawaii" keyword, Search Funnels will show an assist click for the keyword "hawaii vacation" and an assist impression for the keyword "flights to hawaii". Testing the value of assist clicks and impressions is important for evaluating and understanding the true value of all of your keywords.

Search Funnels not only help you understand the keywords seen by converters, they also show you those that weren't seen. For example, in the Flyaway campaign, it's possible that another keyword, such as "hawaii surf lessons," didn't contribute any assist clicks or impressions, or last click conversions, indicating that this may be a keyword that's providing little conversion value. Assist information is an additional data point you can use when making strategic budgeting decisions, from the campaign level down to the keyword level.

Search Funnels also show the "Path Length," or average number of clicks and impressions prior to conversion, which can help you understand and target repeat visitors. Additionally they show "Time Lag," or the amount of time it takes a customer to convert after seeing or clicking on your ads for the first time, which can help you determine lead time for seasonal campaigns. These breakdowns can help you understand your customers' behavior and create strategies around that information.

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Over the next few weeks, the Search Funnels beta will be rolled out gradually to all accounts in the 'Conversions' section under the 'Reporting' tab. To activate them, you must either have AdWords Conversion Tracking running or import goals or transactions into AdWords from Google Analytics. Keep in mind that Search Funnels are only available in your AdWords account (not in Google Analytics), and will only show data for keywords that show up in at least one conversion path. Search Funnel data is currently limited to search ads showing on Google.com, for ad impressions and clicks within 30 days of the conversion.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Traffic improvements and new name for Google Ad Planner

Every day, thousands of AdWords advertisers use Google Ad Planner to research websites and select where to advertise online. We're continuing to improve this tool in order to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible.

To that end, we've improved how Ad Planner calculates site traffic by over 10%, and we've changed its name to DoubleClick Ad Planner. Visit the DoubleClick blog to read more about the traffic improvements and the new name.

You don't need to be a DoubleClick customer to use the newly renamed DoubleClick Ad Planner as the tool remains free and open for everyone. You can continue to access it at: www.google.com/adplanner.

If you haven't used Ad Planner, we invite you to give it a try. We think you'll find it to be a powerful research and media planning tool that makes it easy to find your audience and create well-informed media plans.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords & Analytics Sessions at SES Chicago

Next week on December 7th and 8th, you can catch presentations by the Google AdWords team at SES Chicago. We'll be offering practical tips on how to quickly improve your search and display ads performance in the following sessions:

• What's New and Exciting with Google Analytics: the latest tools and reports from our Analytics platform.

• Getting the Most Out of AdWords Optimization Tools: improve your campaigns with recently added AdWords features like the Opportunities tab, new data segmentation options, and custom alerts.

• The Next Generation of AdWords Bidding: Conversion Optimizer: learn how the Conversion Optimizer tool can help you achieve double digit percentage increases in conversions without increasing the cost per conversion.

Finally, if you want to learn more about AdWords optimization tools, you can also watch a video walkthrough of the improvements we've made to AdWords this year. Ariel Bardin, the lead Product Manager for the AdWords web interface, will take you through the major new features and give you tips on managing your campaigns more efficiently.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Tips for reaching your audience on the go

Because high-end mobile phones offer a browsing experience that is similar to the desktop computer, advertising on mobile is a natural extension for any AdWords campaign. With high-end mobile phones like the iPhone and phones running Android offering full (HTML) Internet browsers, consumers are using their phones and desktop computers in similar ways. However, it has not always been easy to reach people on these new mobile phones. That's why we're investing in new high-end mobile advertising products. We hope to make advertising on high-end mobile devices as intuitive and powerful as our existing AdWords tools.

We've just launched a new AdSense feature that will allow you to target your standard AdWords ads to high-end mobile phones. You will be able to extend your existing campaigns to mobile and reach users on the go, all without having to create separate mobile ads. Remember that if you don't want your ads to show on mobile phones, you can choose to target desktop computers only by editing your device settings in your AdWords campaign settings.

Here are three easy tips to help you take advantage of these features and get you started advertising on mobile:

1. For your image ads, create ads sized 300x50, 250x250, 200x200, and 300x250. These sizes will ensure that your ads are shown on high-end mobile phones surfing mobile-optimized web content.

2. Limit the use of Flash on your website. You want to ensure that users have a good experience and flash won't work for all browsers. Instead, consider creating a mobile-optimized version of your website.

3. Make it easy for users to reach your conversion event. For example, you may choose to put your call to action in a spot on your landing page that users will find quickly or have users land directly on a page that gets users closer to the target action. Keep in mind that it's a bit more difficult to navigate websites on a mobile device, so consider shortening processes for users.

By extending your existing ad campaign to mobile, you can reach your consumers wherever they are.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Get on the (Google) Map!

As an AdWords advertiser, you're likely focused on making sure your paid advertising campaigns are performing well and delivering positive results - but have you also thought about taking advantage of the free ways you can promote your physical business location on Google and Google Maps as well? In this post, we'll show you how to ensure your business locations can be found on Google, and then we'll show you how to go a step further by promoting your locations with AdWords location extensions.

Free promotion

If your business already appears as a search result on Google.com and Google Maps, you can use Local Business Center to claim your listing and add additional information, such as photos, videos, business hours and more. It's completely free. If your business doesn't currently show at all, you can create a new listing, which is also free. Local Business Center recently launched a dashboard that lets you see how many users saw your listing, how many clicked on various links in your listing, and which search queries caused your listing to appear. To get you started with Local Business Center, we've put together some helpful tips on the kind of information you can and should include in your listing.

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Drive even more sales with paid promotion

In addition to ensuring your organic listings are up-to-date, you can use AdWords ads for additional promotion. Both location-targeted text ads and location extensions can appear on Google Search and Google Maps result pages. When you create location extensions, you'll be able to show your business addresses within your text ads. If you're a primary business owner, you can link your Local Business Center account with AdWords to ensure the most up-to-date information about your business is appearing within your ad. When you use extensions, you'll also be able to upload a custom icon that will appear when your ads show on Google Maps. This allows you to take a more active role in ensuring your business locations stand out when users look for businesses like yours in your area.

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So what are you waiting for? Take the first step and get yourself on the (Google) map by claiming or listing your business in Local Business Center.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursday: Introducing spreadsheet editing

Many advertisers use spreadsheets when managing their AdWords campaigns to streamline tasks such as changing bids, creating keyword lists, and adjusting destination URLs. As a result, we decided to work on a way for you to use spreadsheets directly in your account, and today this feature is available in the new AdWords interface.

You can access spreadsheet edit mode from the Keywords tab in any ad group. You'll find it under the More actions menu.

In the past, you might have used power posting to enter your keywords with bids and destination URLs. Now, with spreadsheet editing, you can accomplish the same tasks from a spreadsheet view. Even if you use another spreadsheet application, it's very easy to transfer your work into AdWords - simply copy and paste directly from your spreadsheet into your account.

Like in a spreadsheet, you can use formulas to edit your keywords and bids. For example, if you want your ad to show on the first page, but your bid is lower than the first page bid, you can set up a formula to address this.

Here, I've set my Max CPC to be 120% of the first page bid (Cell G2). To apply this to all of my keywords, I can just copy and paste. Keep in mind that only the values are saved back into AdWords, not the formulas.

Questions? Attend a new interface webinar tomorrow

We'll be holding another free webinar about the new AdWords interface tomorrow, July 10th at 11a.m. PDT. If you're looking to get up to speed quickly, it's a great way to spend an hour on Friday. If you can't make it tomorrow, we have one on Thursday, July 16th at 10a.m. PDT as well. You can register for either webinar on the New Interface Webinars site.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Analytics and AdWords tips - Part 1 of 4

In our survey last month you told us you were interested in hearing more about how Google Analytics can help you improve your AdWords results. Today, we're going to kick off a four-part series on precisely this subject.

For those of you unfamiliar with Google Analytics, it's a free tool that lets you see how visitors interact with your site. While AdWords helps you drive traffic to your site, Google Analytics helps you find out what happens to these visitors after they get to your site. For example, if your ad for shoes directs visitors to a page with all the brands of shoes you offer, here are some things Analytics can show you:

• Which types of shoes do visitors view most often? For example, do people prefer sandals or sneakers?
• In which order do visitors view pages? For example, do people view more expensive shoes, but then buy cheaper ones?
• Which pages are the last ones people see before leaving the site? For example, do people get confused on the sign-up page and leave?
• Do people actually complete a goal on your site? For example, how many visitors buy or sign-up?

All this information can help you make better decisions about your website and your AdWords advertising. For example, if your ad directs people to a page that Analytics says has a high bounce rate (where many people leave the site after viewing the page) you can change your destination URL to point to another page. In that way, you can get more value out of your website traffic.

Over the next few weeks we'll explore specific ways that you can use Analytics to maximize your AdWords investment:

Part 2 - Linking your Analytics and AdWords accounts & tracking your revenue
Part 3 - Identifying keywords that lose you money & calculating your ROI
Part 4 - Finding keywords and ad positions that drive revenue

But if you're in a hurry to get started, you can watch the Google Analytics in 60 Seconds series to learn how to effectively use Google Analytics:

Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find the Best Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Location Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find Poor Performing Campaigns and Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Placement Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Identifying High Spenders
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Conversion Funnels
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Tracking Ecommerce with Google Analytics

And if you'd like to learn more about Google Analytics, including case studies and in-depth looks at its features, you can visit the Google Analytics site.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New Insights for Search features

Since we launched Google Insights for Search in August of last year, we've received great feedback about the many ways advertisers have been using Insights for Search - from anticipating demand better, to stocking desired brands, to finding new keywords for their AdWords campaigns from the list of top rising search terms. Today, we're launching additional features that will provide more granular data so you can make better informed advertising decisions.

• New data sources - We've added additional data from Google News, Image and Product Search sites so you can see what the world is searching for beyond Google Web Search. For example, retailers could use the Product Search filter to get a better understanding of what people are more likely to buy, and then stock the appropriate products.

• Category suggestions - Ever wonder what other categories your search terms might be classified under? Insights for Search now suggests category breakdowns for your terms. For example, if you type in the search term "apple", Insights for Search will show you all the relevant categories searches are classified under such as Computers & Electronics, Entertainment, and Food & Drink.
  

• Metros for the U.S. - You can now drill down to specific geographic regions, or metros, to see how search interest levels vary. This can help you with geo-targeting in your AdWords campaigns.
  

For some quick inspiration on how to get started, check out our latest Google Insights for Search in 60 Seconds videos. You can also follow your favorite search terms from your iGoogle page by adding the Official Google Insights for Search Gadget.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New templates for coupon display ads, as used by Razorfish

We now have two new display ad templates available which allow you to easily create online coupons to run on sites across the Google content network. You can probably guess why coupon-based promotions might be especially effective these days, and display ads allow you to add in eye-catching ad copy, coupon codes, and customized color schemes that wouldn't be possible with simple text ads.

Razorfish, a top digital advertising agency, has begun to use templates for coupon-based promotions for a major national retailer in the U.S. Danny Huynh, Associate Search Director at Razorfish, has this to say about the tool: "We see the display ad builder as a great creative sandbox, allowing us to us to quickly test and iterate with new ad formats and capabilities that simple text ads can't offer. The coupon templates in particular are allowing us to bring the messages from our customers' offline circulars, to the online world, at scale with Google's content network. We're planning to test display ad builder templates on an ongoing basis."

Each of our new templates has a prominent slot for featuring a price or a discount, e.g., "20% off," and has extra room for coupon codes. As with any of our other templates, you can easily edit your ads on an ongoing basis to change the discount level, prices and any other customizable aspect. Just remember that any edits will need to reviewed by an AdWords specialist, and may take 2-4 business days to take effect. Here's an example of the new templates, which come in several sizes:

(click to view image)

To access these new templates, log in to your AdWords account and choose the "Display ad builder" ad format option within any ad group. Then, choose the "Retail" category to find the coupon templates. This video can also show you how to access the feature.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew