The beta test for Google’s offline tool is invitation only at the moment, but the free management utility for Windows users should gain a large following when it goes public.
Users participating in the beta test of the AdWords Editor can work offline with their campaigns and perform their various management tasks in a friendly graphical environment.
AdWords account holders can download their entire account, make changes, and upload them back to Google. That includes making bulk changes that can be imported into the tool via a wizard and uploaded to the campaign and ad group of the user’s choice.
The tab-based editor window lets users choose to view their keywords, text ads, negative keywords, ad groups, and campaigns. Viewing keywords, for example, shows their MaxCPC, clicks and impressions, the click-through rate, and the average CPC and position for that keyword.
The tool polices the changes users make, so if it picks up on something that may violate AdWords policies (like saying “Click Here!”) the utility will flag it for review before uploading.
Changes Google makes to the AdWords Editor get picked up automatically, via an Auto Update utility. Since the software is in beta, one may expect to see quite a few updates, especially in the earliest days and weeks of the testing process.
As nifty as the tool looks, there are a lot of features it doesn’t support yet, like site targeting. Since it is an offline utility, performance stats only update when they are downloaded anew from Google.
However, the visual appeal and ease-of-use should make the AdWords Editor’s first steps acceptable to users. Blogger Greg Yardley commented on how Google made a smart move by offloading some of the resources demanded for keyword editing to the AdWords users’ machines:
…it makes it just a little bit easier to manage an AdWords campaign and therefore just a little bit more appealing to buy AdWords. Makes me wonder what they’re thinking over at Yahoo. I’ve never met anyone who had a nice thing to say about Overture’s ease of use.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
