To help you get the most out of Google's AdWord Editor, it’s important to understand what the tool is and what it isn’t.

AdWords Editor is a free resource provided by Google that can help you with several bulk editing tasks within your AdWords campaigns, such as:

• Raising or lowering bids on a number of different keywords
• Copying large sections of your campaigns and then tweaking certain areas (moving a list of keywords, a set of ad text, etc.)
• Changing keyword match types [8] in mass
• Bulk changes of things like URLs where you need to find and replace across multiple areas of your campaign
• Copying entire campaigns to push to adCenter

What it lacks is mainly “intelligence” – the application isn’t doing a lot of automation or making proactive best practice suggestions (for AdWords this happens within AdWords Automated Rules [9] and the AdWords Opportunities Tab [10]). So while AdWords Editor is helping you to manage certain aspects of your campaigns and push data into Google AdWords, it’s not a campaign management platform in the sense that it’s doesn't make active suggestions around things like bids, keywords, campaign structure, ad copy, etc.

Google AdWords Editor Help – How to Use AdWords Editor

Now that you know what AWE is and isn't helpful for, you can learn to use the tool and likely get a lot of value out of it. Google has their usual combination of helpful (but relatively dry) documentation on the tool here [6], offering tutorials on subjects such as:

• Downloading accounts and statistics
• Navigation
• Search
• Adding, editing, and deleting
• Import and export
• Checking for errors
• Sharing and reviewing changes
• Posting changes
• Installation
• Managing multiple accounts
• AdWords Editor settings
• Upgrading to a new version
• Release notes

Additionally, AdWords offers a handy Google AdWords Editor tutorial video:

Google AdWords Editor Tips & Tricks

In addition to the standard uses of AdWords Editor for more “vanilla” campaign management tasks, here are a few good resources for specific applications of the AdWords Editor functionality:

• Align Your Bids with Your CPA within 5 Minutes [11]
• 5 Handy New AdWords Editor Features [12]
• 6 Reasons to Love AdWords Editor [13]
• Making Use of Google Keyword Status [14]

About the Author

Tom Demers [15] is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM search engine marketing consulting [16], a boutique search marketing agency offering search engine marketing services [17] ranging from pay-per-click account management to search engine optimization and content marketing [18] and link building services [19] such as guest posting services [20] and blog consulting [21].

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help [22] or get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com or by following him on Twitter [23].