Introducing Google Ads Editor: A Must-Have Tool For Advertisers

Introducing Google Ads Editor: A Must-Have Tool For Advertisers

Google Ads Editor is an offline editor for your Google Ads accounts. It is a tool from Google that enables advertisers to manage a variety of accounts with multiple campaigns and keywords. Further, it can be used offline too. The application enables you to manage your campaigns outside of the Google Ads browser UI.

In the early days of Google Ads (formerly called Google AdWords), all has was the online interface. As the Google Ads campaigns started to be managed by an in-house PPC manager, it was so successful that it quickly expanded the account to represent all the products. Managing so many campaigns became unwieldy. Changes that were made went live immediately, and there was no way to review the work before it became active.

In early 2006, Google Ads Editor (then called AdWords Editor) rolled out. Search marketers everywhere rejoiced, and bulk editing is going to be a lot easier.

Offline Editor

Google Ads had been using a version of Editor internally for a while, and advertisers could send bulk changes to their reps, and the reps used Editor to make the changes. Google finally realized it would be more efficient if advertisers could make bulk changes themselves. The editor was a boon for advertisers as accounts grew more complex.

Use Google Ads Editor

Download Google Ads Editor from Google Ads. You will be prompted to log in and download your Google Ads account from your My Client Center (MCC). The Accounts Manager shows all the accounts in MCC, along with an optimized score, stats on the last date updated, and any errors.

Once the account is downloaded, showing main screen where you can see the entire account at a glance and easily expand or collapse various elements such as campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords. You will see all your campaigns, along with an icon indicating campaign type, where a magnifying glass indicates a search campaign, and a video camera indicates a YouTube campaign. There is also an icon for display campaigns.

Searching for a campaign in the left navigational menu by typing a search term or campaign name into the Search Campaign box at the top. Syncing is important to make sure that you have imported any changes made directly in Google Ads into Google Ads Editor.

On the top left menu, you can find other elements of the Google Ads account like keywords, ads, targeting, etc. Selecting a campaign or ad group in the top left would change the information in the bottom, where you will just see info for the selected campaign. There are a total of five campaigns, 16 ad groups, 750 keywords and targeting, and 91 ads.

Selecting an element from the lower left, see the details in the centre and right-hand section of the Editor. Selecting “Ad groups” for the entire account, and in the center, you will see ad groups, along with their status (green dot for active, hash marks for paused). While on the right, select an ad group and make edits to any of the fields shown. Selecting multiple elements enables you to make bulk changes all at once.

Suppose you wanted to update all the bids for every ad group in the entire account to the same account, simply select all the ad groups in the center, and then make the change in the right. Followed by entering the desired bid in the Default Max CPC box shown, would update all the ad group bids to the same account.

Make myriads of bulk edits. If you wanted to update all the final URLs for every ad in each campaign to the same URL. Firstly, select the campaign in the left nav, followed by the type of ads you want to update in the lower left nav, as seen in number two. Then select all the ads in the center section, as seen in number three. Finally, change the Final URL to the new URL in the right nav seen in number four.

Posting Your Changes

Changes are all made offline using Google Ads Editor, enabling you to check your work for errors before it goes live. Everybody has made a change that they had to go back and reverse, which may occasionally be a difficult undertaking. Error risk is significantly decreased while using Editor.

Training New Hires

Use Editor for training new hires, as it is not only easy to see and understand the account structure in Editor, but also helps with QA-ing the work of a trainee. Changes are made in Editor live on the user’s local device until they are posted to Google Ads. They are not visible to other users of the Google Ads account.

By remote training, you can have them upload their changes in a paused state, import them to your local Editor, check them and then change the status to Active. To post changes made in Editor, click Post in the upper right-hand corner, and then Post in the dialogue box: be sure to select All Campaigns or Selected Campaigns to post the correct changes.

Filtering in Google Ads Editor

Working in large Google Ads accounts may be overwhelming when looking at the entire account all at once, particularly if there are a lot of paused campaigns. That’s why filters come in. One filter use a lot is a filter showing only enabled entities: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, etc., which is invaluable for working in large accounts with a lot of paused entities.

Import Statistics Into Google Ads Editor

Google Ads Editor has a View Statistics feature that enables you to import performance stats. None is selected by default, but wen clicking Get statistics, you have several options. Accordingly, choose your date range at the top left, and then select whatever statistics you want to view in Editor. Do save a set of stats to view later.

Viewing stats in Google Ads Editor enabling to make optimization decisions, just like you would in the online UI. Make sure to check the box next to the campaigns for which you want to view stats in the left-hand section.

Create New Builds in Google Ads Editor

Creating new builds offline is one of the most useful features of Google Ads Editor. Unlike the online UI, where any uploads go live immediately unless you set their status to Paused, uploads in Editor don’t activate until you post them. This is enabling you to check your work and even have someone else check your work before you post. Many PPC managers are using Excel for developing campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ad copy.

Find and Replace

You can replace text, append text, change capitalization, or change URLs. Replace text is useful if you need to change a word or phrase in ad copy or keywords, or even in naming conventions for campaigns and ad groups. Append text is particularly helpful if you need to append URL tracking parameters to a URL or entity name. Change capitalization enabling change to title case, sentence case, or all lower case. Change URLs is a great tool the enabling to set URLs, appending text to URLs, or removing a URL parameter.