home james Test New AdWords Interface

A while ago, we posted about reports of US advertisers testing an early beta version of a new Google AdWords interface. Well, for the past few weeks, Google have gradually been rolling out this beta test (albeit a much later version) across more and more accounts in Europe, and here at hômejames we’ve been having a play! In this post we explain some of the new features and give you our thoughts.

Updated Design

The first, and most obvious change that hits you, is the design. It’s been brought bang up-to-date, and now closely resembles the experience with Google Analytics. There’s drop-down menus to access all areas with one click, a collapsible left-hand side section that gives quick access to all your campaigns and ad groups, and graphs that present historical trends to you.

AJAX and Bid Management

Google have heavily employed the use of AJAX technology to facilitate the loading of screens / pages without going to a new URL. This works wonders for bid management, where much like Yahoo, you can now change bids on the keyword screen without the entire page having to reload – and all performance data is there in front of you. It’s quicker, slicker and more effective this way. 10 points to Google!

Keyboard Shortcuts

More a feature for those that work with AdWords all day everyday (that’d be us then!) the new keyboard shortcuts functionality could help speed up account navigation no-end. Global navigation, table navigation and actions, along with editing ad groups and keywords can now all be done without the use of a mouse.

Filters

Without doubt the most useful new feature, hides away under a “Filter and Views” button in the top-right of almost every page. AdWords now allows you to apply filtering to campaigns, ad groups, and keywords based on any criteria you could wish for. This makes finding your best performers or low earners easy, over any given time range. You can set more than one criteria too – allowing you to really narrow down your selection, to say those keywords with a CTR of above 0% yet below 5%. What’s more, the results give you full access to the AJAX functionality mentioned above, leaving you to wield the axe at your pleasure to chop and trim your keywords into shape.

A Few Gripes

There are a few functions we liked from the old interface that are presently missing from the new, and this hinders one’s campaign management somewhat. There’s no search box to easily find a particular keyword, and you’re forced into opening the offline editor as the next best way to do this. Additionally, there are no scroll arrows for going from one ad group to the next within a particular campaign, and the custom date range selection is now 1-click away, as opposed to always being on the screen.

Our sources at Google tell us that the search functionality is being worked on, albeit with no date for release. Once this is in, the advantages will outweigh the few gripes above, and we’re hopeful Google will fix some of these before the full release anyway!

For further information and videos on the new Google AdWords interface, visit the official site.