Like many of the other major pay per click search engines, Google offers its advertisers free tools to use. But unlike other pay per click search engines, these tools are very helpful, accurate, and will help you to make more money online. In fact, I prefer Google’s tools to the tools you pay for.

Google�s Ad Diagnostics Tool

Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool will tell you which of your Text Ads are showing for a particular search, without you having to type that keyword into Google to see if your advertisement is appearing yourself. It will also tell you why your ads are not running or why they are not on the first page of the search results. I would recommend using this tool until you get your text ads running profitably.

Google also displays this tool next to each keyword in your keyword list. If you look next to your keywords you should see a button that looks like a magnifying glass. If you put your curser over this (you don’t have to click on it). When the curser appears it will tell you how your text advertisements are performing for that keyword. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is 100% accurate.Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool will tell you which of your Text Ads are showing for a particular search, without you having to type that keyword into Google to see if your advertisement is appearing yourself. It will also tell you why your ads are not running or why they are not on the first page of the search results. I would recommend using this tool until you get your text ads running profitably.

For more information about Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool, I recommend watching the following video from Google.

Google Video - Ad Diagnostics Tool

Google’s Traffic Estimator Tool

First off, to find the traffic estimator tool click on the Tools link and then click on the link titled “Traffic Estimator”.

The traffic estimator tool does what it says. That is, it tells you how many clicks and impressions you should expect to receive as well as your ad’s position and estimated cost per day.

Although this is a pretty handy tool, I don’t recommend using it a lot. This is mainly because Google’s traffic estimates are far from accurate.

For more information about Google’s Traffic Estimator Tool, I recommend watching the following video from Google.

Google Video - Traffic Estimator Tool

Google AdWords Editor Tool

If you’ve been following this guide chronologically, you should already know what AdWords Editor is and what it does. But since this is a complete guide to Google AdWords I’m going to describe in more detail exactly what Google’s AdWords Editor tool is and does.

Google offers its advertisers free use of a tool which allows you to download your AdWords account to your computer and manage it without being logged in to Google AdWords.

I recommend watching this introduction video by Google about the AdWords Editor Tool:

Google Video - AdWords Editor Adding Information

Google Video - AdWords Editor Viewing Data

Google Video - AdWords Editor Sharing Information

What does this tool do?

This tool was designed to help AdWords account holders manage their Google accounts and campaigns. Google recommends that this tool will be a good aid for advertisers with large accounts. This tool will allow you to manage your entire account offline, but you must download your account first. Its best features include sorting through keywords, text ads, and accounts with ease, but if you have a large account, be prepared to wait because it can take a while to load.

Should you use this tool?

I used to not recommend using this tool, but Google has changed some account features that make it almost necessary to download and use this tool. The feature that Google removed from managing your account online is the ability to find and edit all of your inactive keywords at once. Luckily AdWords Editor has this feature that allows you to edit your inactive keywords (so you don’t have to go and manually edit each keyword bid one at a time for your inactive keywords).

Here are some problems I found with this tool:

It’s recommended for large accounts, yet the larger your account the longer it takes to load.
You can use it offline, but you must be online to download your account and online to upload your account’s changes.
Its user interface is different from your AdWords account user interface, meaning you will have to take time to learn how to use this tool before it will benefit you.
It doesn’t do a good job of telling you when your keywords may be inactive for search. In order to get an accurate idea of your inactive or active keywords you either have to login to your AdWords account online, or you have to remove your AdWords account from AdWords Editor and then re-add it again to AdWords Editor.

This tool wasn’t all bad though, here are the good things:

Can filter through your results to find poor performing keywords, change them, and then upload them to your account.
You can save your account onto a file on your computer for back-up purposes or you can send it to someone for help or review.

How to Use AdWords Editor

Like I said above, AdWords Editor is now the only way you can edit all of your inactive keywords at once. Trust me, there’s nothing more annoying than having to go change the bid for thousands of keywords one at a time. Here’s what you need to do to get AdWords Editor.

Downloading AdWords Editor

Downloading AdWords Editor is very easy to do, and yes they do have AdWords Editor for both Windows and Mac computers.

To download AdWords Editor click on the link below which will take you to the download page:

http://www.google.com/adwordseditor/

Setting Up AdWords Editor

Setting up Google’s AdWords editor tool is fairly easy to do. Basically it will prompt you for two things.

The email address you use to login to your AdWords account.
The password you use for your AdWords account.

After you enter this information AdWords Editor will download your account to your computer (be sure you’re on the internet when you do this). Make sure you are not logged into your AdWords account when you are using AdWords Editor (downloading or uploading information), because in my experience this has caused AdWords Editor to do partial downloads and uploads.

Basic Information about AdWords Editor

AdWords Editor will not change any information in your account (AdWords account) unless you click on the “Post Changes” button.
You can manage multiple accounts using AdWords editor.
AdWords Editor uses colors to symbolize AdWords rules. If there’s a red symbol next to the AdGroup, Keyword, Campaign, or Text Ad it means there’s an error with that particular AdGroup, Keyword, Campaign, or Text Ad and it will not upload.

Adjusting the Bids for all the Inactive Keywords in your Account / How to Activate Thousands of Inactive Keywords in Seconds

This is by far the best way to change/edit the status or bid for all of the inactive keywords in your AdGroup, Campaign, or entire account.

Why would you want to do this? Well, chances are that you will see keywords in the inactive for search state and in order to fix this you will need to increase bids, delete them, or re-group them.

For this example I will show you how to edit all the inactive keywords within your entire account. If you want to edit the inactive keywords within a specific AdGroup or campaign simply click on that campaign or AdGroup when choosing what you want to edit.

First off you will need to tell AdWords Editor that you’re going to edit your entire account. To do this login to AdWords Editor and on the left side of AdWords Editor click on the name of your account. This will select your entire account including all keywords, text ads, AdGroups, and campaigns.

Now you will want to tell it that you’re going to edit only the keywords. To do this simply click on the “Keywords” tab in AdWords Editor. Your screen will change and it will display all the keywords within your account.

Next you will need to tell AdWords Editor that you only want to edit the Inactive Keywords within your account. To do this click on the dropdown box titled “View” near the top of AdWords Editor. In this drop down box you will need to select “Create or Set Custom View…”.

This will open a new window and on this window you should ignore everything except for the check boxes near the bottom. In these check boxes uncheck everything except for “Broad”, “Phrase”, “Exact”, and “Inactive”. Then click on the “Search” button at the bottom of this window.

This will now display all of the inactive keywords within your AdWords account. Usually to make it easier and faster for me I click on the “Min. CPC…” column button (it may not look like a button, but if you click on the text “Min. CPC…” you will see that it is a button) which sorts the keywords by your minimum required cost per click (A.K.A. your Quality Score).

Now to select the keywords you want to edit, click on the first keyword you want to edit and hold the “Shift” key on your keyboard. While you’re still holding the “Shift” key, click on the last keyword you want to edit. This should select all the keywords in between the first and last keyword you selected. To select specific keywords, do the same thing but instead of holding the Shift key hold the “Ctrl” (control) key.

To delete the keywords, click the delete button.

To increase bids for the keywords look towards the bottom of AdWords editor and enter the new bid in the box titled “Maximum CPC Bid” (this may say “” or “”).

To move the keywords to another AdGroup or Campaign click on the “Edit” menu at the very top of AdWords Editor and select “Cut”. The open the AdGroup/Campaign you want to put the keywords, click on the “Keywords” tab, and then go to the “Edit” menu and select “Paste”.

When you’re done and want to post these changes to your AdWords account, click on the “Post Changes” button.

Sorting & Grouping Keywords Using AdWords Editor

Another unique and useful feature that AdWords editor has is that it will sort and group keywords from an AdGroup, Campaign, or your entire account and it will create and insert these keywords into new AdGroups.

Unfortunately, I don’t recommend using this tool 100% of the time because it will simply create massive numbers of AdGroups (it’s not uncommon for it to create an AdGroup for just one keyword). The best time(s) to use this tool is when Google has made some of your keywords inactive for search and you need to regroup them to try to improve your Quality Score.

To use this tool simply select the AdGroup or Campaign you want to regroup the keywords in.

Before you click on the “Generate common terms” button to start grouping your keywords you will want to tell AdWords Editor to ignore certain common words. To do this enter the following words into the “Ignore these words” section of the keyword grouper:

An	Getting	Is	one	Was
And	He	Me	Our	your
But	his	My	that	A
For	I	of	The
Get	In	on	To

After you’ve told AdWords editor to ignore these words, click on the “Generate common terms” button. This will display the AdGroup names that Google will group the keywords into. Then click on the “Next” button for AdWords Editor to sort the keywords into those AdGroups (note: AdWords Editor will create the AdGroups for you, you don’t have to create them).

AdWords Editor will now display the new AdGroups in Bold and the keywords within those AdGroups. If you want to copy text advertisements over to the new AdGroups (I recommend doing this), select the AdGroup that contains the Text Ads you want to use and click on the finish button.

Now AdWords Editor will have sorted and grouped all the keywords. Before you can post the changes to your AdWords account you will need to specify a minimum bid for the new AdGroups that were created. To do this click on the “AdGroups” tab and select all of the new AdGroups that were created. Then at the bottom of AdWords Editor enter a new max bid in the text area titled “Maximum CPC Bid”.

When you’re finished click on the “Post Changes” button.