I’m sure by now most of you have noticed the new Google Adwords Campaign Optimizer link when managing your accounts. Well I’m here to tell you what it is, what it does and why you may not be able to use it.
What is the Google Adwords Campaign Optimizer? The campaign optimizer tool is a fairly new, free tool within the Adwords interface. You can access this tool while either in a campaign or in the tool section of Adwords. The campaign optimizer is an automated service that reviews your campaign budgets, keywords, keyword bids and ad text and will generate a custom proposal in which you can accept changes or decline changes. The proposal literally takes seconds to generate and it’s all completed within the Adwords user interface, which makes it really convenient. You get to review each ad group one at a time.
How Does it Work? Basically, it’s not as custom as you would think or want. It reviews your keywords first, and generates a list of keywords from the keyword tool that you may not have in your ad group yet. Once it gives you the list of keywords you can then add the keywords one at a time or all at once. Second, it reviews each keyword bid. It will recommend an increase or a decrease (yea right!) in your keyword bids based on the quality score of each keyword. It will also give you a list of all the unchanged keywords.
Third, it reviews your ad text for each ad group within your campaign. Basically for me it capitalized the first letter of each word in my display URL. Example, instead of www.ppchero.com, they recommended PPCHero.com.
Why You May Not Be Able to Use the Campaign Optimizer? I noticed that when trying to use the campaign optimizer I kept getting various errors on different campaigns. I finally looked within the Adwords help section to get a better understanding on why I couldn’t use this tool. Here’s a few of the reasons/limitations on why you may not be able to use the campaign optimizer on certain campaigns.
- Campaign type: Campaign must be keyword targeted.
- Campaign status: Campaign must currently be active or paused. Deleted campaigns aren’t eligible. Your campaign also can’t have ended (end date must be in the future).
- Campaign is too large: Campaigns can have no more than 64 ad groups and no more than 2000 keywords across all ad groups in order to be eligible.
- Language targeting: Your campaign must target only one language which must be a currently supported language. Learn how to view and adjust your language targeting.
- Your location: Your billing address must be in a supported location where the Campaign Optimizer is available.
- Bidding mode: The campaign’s bids must be set manually, so campaigns using the Budget Optimizer or position preference won’t be eligible.
- Other optimization: You won’t be able to get a proposal for one campaign if you’re already running the Campaign Optimizer for another campaign at the same time.Your campaign also can’t have a pending optimization proposal (except if its an Automated Daily Budget suggestion).
- URL: There are some landing page URLs that the Campaign Optimizer cannot analyze. It’s possible that your website doesn’t contain enough content, especially if you have a Flash site.
Conclusion: I believe the campaign optimizer is a good way to get basic recommendations and ideas on your ad groups including additional keyword recommendations, bidding and ad text suggestions. If you want a personalized, thorough campaign optimization, contact your local Adwords representative.
If you have questions or comments about the tool, there are many forums out there talking about it. You can view them here: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/3431355.htm and here: https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014624.html.
