The virtual stockings are hung by the SERP with care, in hopes that Saint Google soon will be there. The AdWords Experts are nestled all snug in their beds while visions of new features danced in their head and I am sure you know all the rest.
Every year in the fine tradition of the Christmas letter, I write an open letter for the things I want to see in Adwords. Before I get started with the details I would like to note that many of the things I asked for in prior years I actually got, so maybe this letter isn’t as silly as it seems.
Group the Changes
This year St. Google gave us lots of new features. Working with Google is a lot like having Christmas every day because you are often only one click away from finding the newest and latest changes. Google rolls out hundreds of updates each year and it makes managing Adwords a difficult task. We would like to see them slow the process down and batch the changes together with reasonable documentation. We could have a few major releases each year rather than 300 small ones. It is actually a rare day when we do not find some unknown change that sneaked in under the radar.
User Defined Data (UDD)
This has been at the top of my list for a long time and it’s so simple that it amazes me that it was not done a long time ago. Almost every system provides for UDD to cover things they simply did not think of, or that vary from customer to customer. In fairness to my friends at Google, they did roll out labels which addresses this a little bit but those are like putting band-aids on a shark bite. We need actual numbers and codes with simple validation ability. We need this at all levels in the database including the campaigns, adgroups, keywords, and ads.
Advanced Keyword Matching
Google Adwords has only the most basic of keyword matching controls and this really needs to get better. We need the ability to express more powerful rules for the matching and I am not really talking about anything innovative here. Things like wildcards, phrase and broad combinations, capitalization and punctuation expressions and so on. All I am asking for is the same level of ability that we find commonly in Microsoft Excel, Access, or even Word. Surely, Google can beat Microsoft in this area. Maybe the problem with this is it just is not complicated enough to get an engineer’s attention. The rules already exclude symbols and special charters so all the normal ones are available for this use. I would be glad to spec this all out if anyone at Google is interested.
Negative Search Query Report
The search query report that is near and dear to any professional needs to have a negative counterpart. This report would show us search queries that were qualified by the keywords but then were lost to either rank or because they were excluded by a negative keyword. What surprises me about this one is that it would be good for Google’s revenue yet they seem to resist disclosing this. In the logical flow of a search query, there must be a point where this data is simple to grab.
Move, Copy, and Paste
Last year, I asked for this and we got some of it but it still needs help. The ability to download into csv files and then push it back into the system made this area much better but it still is missing some very basic functions such as copying a campaign online. The Desktop Editor does this with no problem but for some reason this functionality never seems to make it to the online editor.
Centralize the Ads
This one kills me because it would save both advertisers and Google a ton of time and fixing it is just a simple relational database concept. Sometimes, especially with image ads, I just want to create an ad once and use it many times so there is a many to one relationship between the ad and the adgroup. I do not want a separate ad for each ad group and I certainly do not want to have to upload the same image ad for every ad group. On Google’s side, this would reduce the number of ads that have to be reviewed saving time and money. This is especially important for image ads, which can take a week to get approved depending on the backlog.
Interactive Change Log & Alerts
Let’s call this one Twitter for Adwords. I manage well over 60 accounts and all my clients have full access to their accounts, as they should. I would like an alert when someone changes something or a campaign runs out of money without having to sign into an account and run a report. Google already logs the changes and all they would have to do is feed it to a secure application modeled after something like Twitter. Sometimes clients accidentally change things and did not even realize it. Some clients run out of money every day so the alerts have to be at least reasonably controllable with an on-off option by account. The alerts and change log need to be across the entire client center and subordinate client centers not per account.
Budget Controls
We would like to have full budget controls that do exactly what they are told. Controls that allow us to set an Account, Campaign, and Ad Group budget distributions that do exactly what they are told to do. To reduce a budget for the month takes two changes and is subject to lots of error. You first have to reduce it to a pace that will come in where you need it and then you have to remember to change it on the first of the month to the new full month budget.
Clean up the Filters
The new interface has been in production for a few years now, yet the filters still have problems. There are very common combinations that are simply not available. The classic of these is that you cannot filter your active ads from the paused ones because the only options are Approved, Pending, and Disapproved. Here is a newsflash; there is a Review and Paused status. Consistency would also be nice to have. All numbers should have the basic value test plus a range of values. Some fields like Avg. Position have better than or worse than, while Avg CPC has ><, while clicks have <= and >=. We also need to have filters work for all the data, not just the level we are at. For example, I should be able to filter ad groups with words in their name and positions for the keyword. The rules should be if I can see the data on the screen, I should be able to filter by it.
Dataset Filters
We often find datasets we want to work with but there is no way to keep the dataset intact. For example, it is very common to filter high position keywords for this month and look at how they look year to date. The problem is as soon as you reset the date range, it changes everything. We need a function that says keep this dataset but show me a different time period.
We know this list is long but Saint Google gets to pick the ones we get. We will just wait with baited breath for the opportunity to shake the boxes under the tree next to the fireplace with cookies and milk.
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night
The AdWords Monster