Changing a batch of under performing keywords in Adwords

There are several frustrating issues with the Adwords interface, that can make optimising campaigns a real chore. One that continues to frustrate is the lack of a feature that allows you to apply changes to a group of keywords at once, based on their status.

Now before somebody points out that Adwords Editor allows you to filter keywords by their status flags (Enabled, Paused) this is not the "status" I mean. In the new adwords interface you can filter keywords based on their status which are currently:

• Not triggering ads: requires action
• Eligible: limited
• Not active
• Eligible
  

This filtering can be very useful when used with the "Eligible: limited" flag to find keywords with poor search volume and impressions (sometimes referred to as low share of voice) so you can tweak and improve their performance.

One thing I like to do when fiddling with campaigns is change the match type for keywords from phrase or exact match to broad match, to see if this improves impressions. The only way to change a batch of keywords through the new adwords interface is to do each manually by selecting the relevant drop down menu; there is no "copy to all rows" button like there is is for other attributes like position preference or Max CPC (see piccy below)

 

 

My workaround to batch edit keywords using Adwords and Adwords Editor

There is a dirty workaround to this annoying problem but it involves using other attributes in the keyword edit dialogue to temporarily group keywords. By using a mix of the following attributes you can create a unique "fingerprint" for the keywords that you can then match in Adwords Editor later:

• Status
• Max CPC
• Destination URL

For example if I wanted to change a bunch of keywords that had low search volume from phrase match to broad match, I would:

• Filter the keywords in the Adwords web interface using "Eligible: limited" to get the list of under performing (low share of voice) keywords.
• Set the mentioned attributes and "copy to all rows" to create a unique "fingerprint" for that group of keywords:
• Change Status to Paused
• Set Destination url to http://www.somedomain.com (obviously this will only works if you don't use individual urls for your keywords)
  and/or
  
• Set Max CPC to something unique and exact like £11.11 (only really works if your CPCs are currently all the same)
  

Once these attributes have been applied to the keywords, go into Adwords Editor and download the current campaign. Use advanced search to look for keywords that have the status paused and a destination url containing "somedomain" (or whatever you chose to use) and/or where the CPC is £11.11.

Once you have your keywords list filtered in Adwords Editor, select all, edit the match type of all of the keywords to "broad", remove the destination url on all keywords, correct the CPCs (if necessary) and switch all keywords to enabled and upload.

Obviously all of this kind of stuff would be much easier if Google improved the filtering and informational content available through Adwords Editor, but until that becomes a reality, we have to find other ways!