New Features of Google AdWords Editor 9.5

by Tara West on 1st September 2011

Google AdWords Editor has a bunch of handy new features, thanks to the Version 9.5 update. This post talks about these features and when you might find some of them useful.

Location Extensions

The latest update makes creating location extensions in Editor nice and easy. Under the Extensions tab you will now find the ‘Location Extensions’ option. Here you can set up an extension with all the usual details (name, address, telephone) as well as an image for your icon:

You can also amend any existing extensions and download or upload them using CSV or XML files.

Being More Productive!

You can now choose to download multiple accounts at once, which is handy if you know you are going to need multiple accounts in one go.

You can also work on other accounts whilst you download another account. This is really useful if you have any particularly large accounts that usually take a long while to download, so you can now get more done at once!

Destination URL Links

You could previously test your destination URLs by clicking on the title within the ad preview box. You can now also test it by clicking the icon next to the destination URL box. This is handy but not a ground breaking development.

Advanced Search

Advanced search has improved to match some of the functions available within the AdWords interface. You can now add multiple settings or performance criteria.

Status Information

Editor now displays the status of keywords, ad groups and campaigns in addition to ads. This can be found in the column called ‘status’.

This is really handy if you have a large number of negative keywords in an account and need to delete some to make room for more, as you can order ad groups by status and delete any negatives which are applied to ad groups that are now paused.

The status column for ads has become more useful, if you hover over any disapproved ads, it now tells you a brief reason for their disapproval, for example:

Undo!!!!

One of the beautiful functions of AdWords editor has been the ability to revert changes. In the latest version, when you revert more than one change, or a significant change such as the creation of a campaign or ad group, you will now receive a summary of the changes in a warning message. You can then choose to go ahead and revert or cancel. This is very handy if you work at speed in editor as it is easy to accidentally revert multiple changes in error.

This function would be even better if you could see the names of the ad groups to be reverted.

If you don’t use the revert button a lot, you can disable the CTRL+Z shortcut now too. If you do use the revert function a lot and the warning message starts to get on your nerves, just visit the Revert section of the settings / tools menu to disable them.

First Page Bid Estimate

Editor now displays your recommended first page bid estimate in the columns next to your keywords, alongside other data. This is handy if you are working to improve ads with a low position as increasing your bids can help with that.

Preview Changes

When you are making multiple changes in editor, you can now choose to preview your changes before you post them.

This is useful for tasks such as adding multiple negative keywords, so that you can double check they are all appropriate for all the ad groups or campaigns you have selected.

Campaign Experiments

If you’re running existing campaign experiments in AdWords, you can now download these within AdWords Editor. You can then use Editor to make changes to your experiments, such as change the status (control, experiment, or control only) at keyword, ad or ad group level.

You can also now apply default bids to your search or display network (CPC), or max CPM bid multiplier for the ad group when running experiments. In addition to this, you can also apply or edit a max cpc bid multiplier for keywords.

Like many other functions in Editor, you can also use CSV or XML files to upload or download your experiment details.

Characters in Destination URLs

You can now use the following in display and destination URLs, as well as placements:

• Non-ASCII domain names
• IPv4 addresses in place of domain names
• IPv6 addresses in place of domain names

You can also use non-ASCII characters in the last part of a display URL (after the /).

Image Ad Dimensions

Images with the following dimensions are now supported within AdWords Editor:

• 320×50 (now valid for mobile image ads as well)
• 300×50
• 425×600
• 300×600

Editor Announcements

You will notice a yellow box at the top of your editor screen which will let you know of any information which will affect your use of editor, such as new updates!

It certainly seems like version 9.5 of Google AdWords editor brings some handy developments. Please let me know if I have missed any new functions and your opinions on it.

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