Everything You Need to Know About Google Ads Editor, in 30 Minutes or Less
There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking the stairs. It’s a perfectly fine means of getting from one place to the next, whether you’re in a mall, an airport or even in your own home. The stairs slowly and steadily help you move up or down a single floor at a time, a predictable form of transportation if there ever was one.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking the stairs. It’s just that ever since the invention of the elevator, there’s a better way to accomplish the same ends. It’s faster, transporting you from Point A to Point B in a fraction of the time, without any sort of major risk to your safety or wellbeing. And granted, there will always be those individuals who prefer the stairs, but for anyone looking for the same result in a shorter span of the time, the elevator is ready to serve.
At this point, we hope you know there’s a Google Ads metaphor coming.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Google Ads platform. After all, it’s the largest online advertising platform built into the world’s largest search engine, and it offers the fastest way to broadcast your message to the right customers, at the right time, at price points you identify and approve.
However, ever since the release of Google Ads Editor – a Google-developed and maintained tool that allows you to perform large-scale changes to your Google Ads accounts, campaigns, keywords, ad groups, ad content, landing pages, etc. in bulk or individually – there’s simply a better, faster way to accomplish the same optimizations, in a fraction of the time.
Here’s the issue: there are far more Google Ads tutorials than there are Google Ads Editor tutorials. We think that’s only because Google Ads is much more of a user-friendly platform to learn quickly and easily. However, we’re about to eliminate the learning curve when it comes to Google Ads Editor. If you can stick with us through the points below, we’ll confidently take you from Google Ads Editor novice to expert in 30 minutes or less!
What is Google Ads Editor?
Put simply, Google Ads Editor is a bulk asset editor tool. Whether you want to change geographic targeting for your entire account, revise negative keywords for all 7 of your campaigns in your campaign, change landing pages for 3 of your 5 ad groups, or simply add new keywords quickly and easily, Google Ads Editor makes bulk changes easy. In fewer clicks and much less time, you can make changes to hundreds of assets at a time.
Here’s the best news: Google Ads Editor is a free, downloadable tool that you can access right now, right here. Make online or offline changes to any of your Google Ads elements, and view the same valuable metrics like CTR, cost-per-click and total spend that inform all important decisions.
How Do I Set Up My Account in Google Ads Editor?
We can’t oversell how easy it is to get started once you download Google Ads Editor. Once you open the software program and you’re prompted on-screen, all you’ll need to do is log in with the same Gmail account responsible for managing all of your Google Ads accounts, select the specific accounts you want to download into the program and submit. Watch while Google Ads Editor does the rest, downloading all campaigns, ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, landing pages, geographic targeting, extensions and more.
Larger accounts might take a few minutes to download, but Google Ads Editor also gives you real-time updates as to the status of your account installations, so you can gauge progress and estimated completion times as soon as downloads begin. Just like that, you’ve downloaded your Google Ads accounts into Google Ads Editor!
What Can I Use Google Ads Editor to Do?
The list of things that Google Ads Editor can’t do is likely much shorter. As a rule of thumb, if you can do it in the in-browser Google Ads platform, there’s a good chance you can also do it in Google Ads Editor, and with fewer clicks. Below, we’ve outlined a number of the actions you can accomplish through the Google Ads Editor platform:
- Copy and paste campaigns, ad groups, ad, extensions, etc. from one account to another
- Copy and paste individual components of a certain campaign, ad group, ad, extension, etc. to another part of your account
- Draft and install new ads, new keywords, new negative keywords, new geographic targeting, new extensions, new audiences, new bid adjustments, etc.
- Remove any ads, keywords, negative keywords, geographic targeting, extensions, audiences, bid adjustments, etc. you no longer want to use
- Undo any changes you accidentally made, or redo any changes you want to make permanent
- Compare and manage multiple different accounts at the same time
- Accomplish any of the above changes, even while working offline
As soon as you’ve made all of the changes you need to make to your accounts, simply hit the “Post” button in the top-right corner, and your changes will go live to Google Ads!
Where Can I Find Key Buttons and Functionality in Google Ads?
Learning your way around the Google Ads Editor platform is by far the most time-consuming part of the software program. Granted, there’s an abbreviated learning curve since you’ll find many of the same functions – albeit in different places – as you already see in Google Ads itself. Still, when it comes to simple and complex optimizations alike, understanding where certain features are within the Google Ads Editor platform can save you massive amounts of time.
We’ve outlined four of the most important Google Ads Editor functions, and how to perform them, below. Feel free to reference and re-reference as you see fit.
1. Find individual campaigns, ad groups, keywords, etc. within a specific account
After you’ve navigated to a specific account, you’ll need to know where to find the account hierarchy, so that you can concisely navigate to the area that needs work. That’s where Google Ads Editor really makes its mark: the software program makes it ridiculously easy to navigate between levels of your account, for easy account-wide optimization.
To find an individual campaign, ad group, keyword, extension, etc., you’ll simply look to the far left of the platform. There in the left column, you’ll see a breakdown of available campaigns and their individual elements, all under the umbrella of the account you’ve selected.
2. Find and revise ad content
One of the most important optimizations you can make to any Google Ads account on an ongoing basis is your ad content. Fortunately, Google Ads Editor makes it really easy to revise your ad content, whether you’re revising ads individually or in bulk.
If you’re revising ads individually, you’ll first want to navigate to the particular ad you want to revise, by identifying the account, then the campaign, then the ad group, then the ad, all from the left-hand side navigation column in Google Ads Editor. Once you’ve reached the specific ad you want to revise, select the ad itself. Once highlighted in blue, the ad’s fields will populate in a column on the right-hand side of the screen, where you can see headlines, descriptions, final URLs, character counts and more. Feel free to make revisions to ads individually, and select the “Post” button in the top-right corner whenever you’re done.
To edit ads in bulk, you’ll follow the same process as above until you reach the account, the campaign or the ad group with the ads you wish to edit. Once you have all the ads you want to edit together on the same screen, hit Ctrl + A to select all ads. Right-click anywhere among the blue-highlighted ads, and select the “Replace text” option. A window will appear, where you can identify the headline, description, final URL, etc. you want to replace. Then, simply write the new text you want to take the old text’s place, and click “Replace”. After a second or so, all ad text will be updated appropriately.
3. Find and address account recommendations
The Google Ads platform frequently makes recommendations for our accounts, whether they concern budget spend, keyword use, individual device bids, ad group segmentation or audience demographics. If you find those recommendations helpful and want to know where you can easily find them in the Google Ads Editor platform, you’re only a few clicks away.
Once you have opened the Google Ads Editor software, simply navigate to the left-hand column, where the complete account hierarchy – account, campaign, ad group, keywords, ads, etc. – can be found. There, at the VERY bottom of the column, once you scroll down past “Ad extensions”, is the “Recommendations” tab. Click into it, and you’ll see all of the active recommendations for your account, segmented by account, campaign, availability, and potential recommendation score increase.
4. Find and address any errors in the account
Most accounts will have errors at one time or another. Maybe you’ve inadvertently drafted ad content that goes against one of Google Ads’ policies. Maybe you’ve accidentally added two landing pages to a single ad group. No matter the error, the Google Ads Editor software is typically proactive in highlighting those errors in red, for easy diagnosis and resolution. However, if you’d like a consolidated view of all active account errors in a single screen, there’s a place for that as well.
In the same left-hand column where you’ve already found the account hierarchy, scroll past “Shared library” and “Custom rules” to find “Error info”. Here, you’ll find an all-in-one reference to every currently-live error or warning in the entire account, updated in real-time according to severity.
Need Even More Help With Google Ads Editor? You Know Where to Find Us.
We totally understand how confusing the Google Ads Editor software can be. Our in-house paid search specialists had to learn the platform, and we have it on good authority that it’s one of the more difficult Google Ads mountains to climb. However, it’s also one of the easiest ways to save time when optimizing your account, once you get a firm grasp on Google Ads Editor and you understand how truly powerful of a program it can be when used correctly.
If you have any questions related to Google Ads Editor that we didn’t address above, we’d still love to help! Feel free to reach out to schedule your FREE growth audit with our team, where we can help you take existing Google Ads accounts to the next level (or help forecast potential spend and return if you’re starting a new account!). No matter where you are in your pay-per-click advertisement journey, we’re excited at the prospect of helping you profitably scale your business through online advertising.
Give Google Ads Editor a try today, to optimize your account at a fraction of the traditional time!
