Google AdWords
Google are renowned for their incredibly long BETA testing cycles, but it appears that the new Google AdWords interface is now more or less live.
I have to admit to being surprised by this, as our own experiences have uncovered many issues with the new system, often resulting in the interface “crashing”, kicking us out of the client’s account and back into our MCC account.
Hmmm.
Many AdWords account holders will today be greeted by an email that begins with the following:
“***Important news regarding your account***
Hello,
In the coming weeks, we’ll convert your AdWords account (Customer ID: XXX-XXX-XXXX) to a new web interface designed to make campaign management faster and easier. You can try it now; log in to your account to access the new interface immediately.
You’ll have at least 30 days from the date of this email before you’ll be required to use the new interface to manage your campaigns. During this time, well continue to release additional features and make adjustments to the new interface based on advertiser feedback.
We’re working to ensure that the new interface contains all the reports and controls that you need to manage your campaigns effectively. We won’t convert your AdWords account to the new interface until we’re confident that it will meet your advertising needs.
Before we convert your account, you can switch between the new and previous interfaces at any time. Click the “Previous Interface and “New Interface (Beta)” links in the top corner of your account (next to your email address) to switch back and forth.”
The email also lists some links to details of the new interface.
Our company has been working with the new interface for some time, and can summarise our main findings as follows.
The good:
- It’s faster. Navigating through campaigns and ad groups is quicker, and it’s easier to get a feel for what’s happening at an account, campaign or ad group level.
- It’s clearer. There are some useful performance graphs that allow you to compare two different metrics at different levels within the account.
- It’s quicker to work with. Bids and keywords can be edited “live” without having to go to a new page to do so.
The bad:
- It’s more confusing than ever before. Google have added new data, new options, new terminology and found new places to move things that will overwhelm most account holders. As a long-time believer that Google try to overwhelm their advertisers with data and options, the new system is more complicated and confusing. Good job on the confusion strategy.
- It’s unstable. There are more bugs than I would expect to see if the system were still in beta.
- It’s huge! I run my system at a rather large 1680 x 1050 resolution, and I still have to use my horizontal scrollbar in the browser for the new system. This is the only website I know that forces me to do so.
- Some of the update is little more than a “pretty” face on the old system. Go to Tools, More Tools for example, and you’ll see the same old options underneath the new nav. Why the rush?
Overall:
You judge for yourself. But I think that a lot more people are going to be wasting more money under this system.
If you’d like to know how much money your AdWords account is wasting, you may be interested in our Google AdWords Report Service.
Keep your eyes peeled, and watch where that spending is going.
hi,
rather ok with your analysis, regarding the witdth of the pages, it seems to be more a bug than a feature: when i start the new interface on my 1280 px wide screen, everything seems ok, then acting on some button unexpectedly makes Google think my screen is much wider and thus scroll… bug.
Armel
My biggest annoyances are the removal of the Next / Previous links on ad group pages and the missing “Edit Keywords” box.
I also ran into the “it’s huge” problem on my MacBook. Tip: just get one of those 24 inch LED Cinema Displays
My first impressions on the new UI:
http://www.alwinhoogerdijk.com/2009/04/26/new-adwords-interface-beta-first-impressions/
I already have a 22 inch widescreen – it’s not enough!
Eurgh, I don’t like the new interface. The whole side-scrolling thing is just annoying – also if you have lots of rows the data section of the page scrolls while the sidebar, header etc stays still. Everything either scrolls or is clickable, you can’t rest your mouse anywhere without performing an action.
I know it’s quicker to get to various adgroups etc but like you said there are still loads of bugs in the interface causing it to crash too often. All that data = confusion. I’m not looking forward to the new interface being rolled out everywhere
It’s never enough. We always want a bigger one.
I hate it, it might be all nice an fast in the rest of the world, but here in South Africa it takes forever to load. When you sitting showing a customer his campaign it does not look good when he has to wait. It also has a lot of bugs and they seem to have taken out the cool features like “Edit Keywords”. There is also the question of editing multiple keywords… no more “increase all to minimum”.
I say Google has rushed this and has not taken into consideration countries with low bandwidth. If we can continue switching between the two then fine, but I am really dreading being stuck waiting for the fancy pictures to load.
I disagree with most- although it was incredibly buggy for me at the outset, it seems to have improved quickly. I utilize a large screen so, while I agree that Design 101 mandates a flex horizontal size, I haven’t experienced this problem.
Now, to play devil’s advocate to my own argument: I do agree that the removal of the next/ previous links is a major loss. Also, the loss of the “search” box which I utilized heavily when locating keywords that were in multiple day targeted accounts I wanted to remove is a huge loss for me.
I did give my input in the space provided however and hope that Google will take it into consideration.
The benefits do not outweigh the overly complex new interface.
Terminology is poor – “eligible” what’s that?
Cost per Many conversions – where’s the full description on this and other new stats?
Interface is slow – 5-10 seconds for every change on the page.
25 seconds to load MCC
Huge – 24″ HD LCD can’t displaythe entire page!
Ajax… I’m still not a big fan, yet.
What’s with the Christmas color theme?
Yes, I do like some of the graphing, but I would rather a complete shift in how analytics and management work together. Either I am managing campaigns, or doing analysis. Providing tools to partly do both in the new interface can promote a fragmented work process. Overlay the interface with full analytics capability, or keep it as simple as possible and let us do the analysis in Analytics, make our notes and then execute the changes within Adwords or AE.
The good news is that with such a steep learning curve and visually complex interface this will certainly eliminate or deter most new users of Adwords.
I find myself switching back and forth a lot – mainly because to see the stats, there is way too much scrolling involved in the new interface. It is a bit faster to work in though.
Frankly – I’ve become unimpressed with the whole system and am trying to encourage clients to spend their money elsewhere – as long as we can find positive ROI’s.
Totally agree with the guys mentioning bandwidth, anyone who lives in rural spots in the UK are going to really struggle with this beast, it brought my computer to a staggering halt again this morning.
Also the lack of the drop down: ‘prefill all my keywords’ button is a real pain; I have contacted a member of the AdWords team about this and am eagerly awaiting a reply.
I think to solve all these problems instead of trying to edit through the AdWords interface users should download the AdWords editor: http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor/, where problems with bandwidth, screen size and the like vanish.
For those who say the new system runs “faster” I must be missing something. It doesn’t make any difference I I access from home on my wireless internet or from work on a fast dsl, the speed STINKS! Just because part of the page loads means nothing. You still end up waiting for the individual parts to load. VERY SLOW.
I agree that the width is a problem too. The reason I got a wide screen is I did not want to scroll left to right. Leave it up to Google to tell me that now I need an 80 inch screen to use their admin.