Recommendations for the Google AdWords Interface

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In the years I’ve been working with the AdWords interface, I’ve witnessed myriad changes, some very much for the better and some less so. One thing Google does very well is continually explore new ways by which they can upgrade and enhance their products and features – they are constantly tinkering with their offerings, which is great, because it means they recognize how important the user experience is. As they set about their next round of development, I hope they’ll consider including some of these recommendations.

Keyword Planner: Not all that long ago, AdWords combined the functionality of two of its features – Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator – into what I’m sure is supposed to be one streamlined super feature, Keyword Planner. While it’s true that by bundling the features together, there exists the potential for the tool to be even more helpful, unfortunately, the way in which it has been done is cumbersome and annoying to navigate. Keyword Planner definitely needs more development and, in the interim, the original Keyword Tool should be returned to us.

Date Range: AdWords offers excellent default date ranges by which to review data – “This month”, “Last month” and “Last 7 days” to name but a few – however, it doesn’t offer the option of scrolling through one’s account by a set period of time. It would be great to be able to have a setting by which you could easily click through your account by day, by week or by month rather than having to manually set what date range you’d like to see. When you’re managing and analyzing multiple accounts, every second of your day counts and having this as an auto setting would save a lot of time.

View Change History: AdWords updated its change history system near the beginning of 2013. Because of this, it’s not possible to view a date range that includes both January 11 and January 12, 2013. So why is “Last 2 years” still an option in the date ranges available if it only ever returns an alert telling you that you need to choose a new range? The date range options for View Change History should be updated to exclude that which is no longer actually an option and include more of the options from the campaign tab, such as “This Week”, for instance.

Google Trends: This isn’t actually a tool in the AdWords interface, but it should be. Google Trends is a great tool for displaying the peaks and valleys in interest of a particular keyword over time, making it a terrific means of visualizing the potential search universe for the client. However, because it is a standalone tool at this time, with every new use it is necessary to enter one’s geographic location and other qualifiers anew. Perhaps if it were an option within the AdWords interface, it would default to the account or campaign’s geographic location, once again, saving valuable time.

These are but four recommendations that I think would go a long way to improving the usability and user experience of the AdWords interface. No need to thank me, Google, but please ensure you take them into consideration and get them implemented soon.

Cheers,

Jason

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