How to Use Google Ads Editor

Ever wish you could hop into your Google Ads account and make changes on the fly?

Well, with the Google Adwords Editor Tool, you can! In this ultimate guide to the magical tool, we’ll take a dive into its features, and how to use it. We’ll also cover some basics of editing your campaigns in bulk.

So if you’re looking to learn a more efficient way to manage multiple AdWords campaigns and work easily in all your accounts, read on!

What is Google Ads Editor?

Google Ads Editor is a free tool that gives advertisers exceptional control of their campaigns and campaign settings without needing an internet connection. 

Known as the Adwords Editor, PPC pros use this downloadable application to create, manage, and edit Google Ads campaigns.

Google Ads Editor can help you be more efficient because it serves as an offline editor for anyone who wants to make changes in bulk on the go. 

It’s also possible to download multiple Ad accounts simultaneously, make changes to Google Ads offline, and then and then upload their updates.

What is Google Ads Editor For?

Because this is a brilliant easy-to-use desktop application that helps you save time by using bulk editing tools, you can:

• Manage multiple accounts
• View statistics for different campaigns
• View multiple accounts
• Search and replace text in multiple campaigns
• Export and import files offline to share proposals

Talk about easy, peasy!

What Makes the Offline Version So Good?

If you’re a PPC professional, you’re probably familiar with the significant advantages offline Editor tools can give you. But managing multiple accounts or upgrading your account took a lot of work before making these changes was possible.

The early days of Google Ads (previously known as AdWords) made it hard to edit and redo multiple ads. To make things worse, reviewing the changes you made to your account wasn’t an option.

Google introduced bulk editability in 2006 when things got better quickly because this allowed campaign managers to edit their entire accounts offline.

Its current version allows you to make the necessary bulk changes to Google Ads, such as tweaking the ad copy so that you can remove duplicate keywords and broken links, replace text and add new keywords.

How To Use Google Ads Editor

With many useful features, the Google AdWords Editor downloadable application has a smart interface that we’ll take you through. Its hallmark is allowing you to quickly expand or collapse campaigns, ad groups, and ads in your Google Ads account.

First step: Download Google Ads Editor on your Desktop from Google Ads like in the screenshot below.

Get to Know Google Ads Editor Interface

Toolbar Overview

You can find a toolbar in the top right corner with the Google Ads Editor. Here, you can select the account you want to work on and see its stats.

On the left, you can see the Accounts Manager, which shows all the accounts in your MCC (My client center). You can upload changes to Google Ads, view your statistics and even add new accounts.

Since you can work on multiple campaigns and accounts in the AdWords Editor, you need to select the account you want to change and click “Open” to download it to your Editor.

After you open the account and before you start working on it, click on Get Recent Changes to make sure that all of the data we have in Google Ads is now downloaded into Editor.

We’re always making changes in the account online, so to ensure that all data is available in the Editor, we never skip this step. This option allows you to edit all campaigns, those you downloaded, or specific campaigns you choose to edit. 

Editing Campaigns, Accounts, and Ad Groups

As you can see in the screenshot below, a little search box on the left helps you navigate any Google Adwords account you own, Google Ads campaigns, and ad groups.

Click on the arrow next to the account name to see the submenus. This is called the “account tree” or the “tree view” because you can easily expand or collapse campaigns and ad groups in your account, whether they are active, new, or other.

In a red square in the screenshot below, you can see the Campaign and ad group, while the list below shows everything else you can edit.

Campaign Types

Once you select account/campaign/ad group, the information displayed in the collapsed menu will change. Now, you can see different campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, etc.

Search box: if you want to search for a campaign by hand, type a search term or Campaign, ad groups, and asset groups into the box.

The three dots next to the search box are important. Clicking on them, you can see enabled, paused, and other types of campaigns, as shown in the screenshot below.

After you’ve found the campaign you want to edit, take a look at the left navigation menu. The icons next to them imply the campaign type you can choose:

• Search Campaign
• YouTube campaign
• Display campaign
• Discovery

You can choose the Campaign or ad group you want to view. Whatever you select at the top will trigger the Editor to change the information displayed at the bottom.

View and Edit Data

This function allows you to view your account data and campaign status. The information you’ll see will vary based on your choice in the tree view.

Here, we can see each Campaign’s status: green dots mean that the ads are active, while others show that they are “paused.”

Bulk Changes

One of our favorite things about Google AdWords Editor is how easy it is to bulk edit your campaigns.

On the right is a window with multiple ad group options, keywords, or texts you want to edit. This allows you to make bulk changes at once.

The AdWords Editor allows you to tailor these bulk changes based on your current needs, which includes lowering bids or updating the bids in the same amount for each ad group.

But bulk editing can look a bit cluttered, as we can see in the screenshot below.

When you have a lot of empty fields, it’s tedious to search through all that information. Luckily, we can use the edit pane and hide all empty tabs that clutter your screen.

When you have a lot of empty fields, it’s tedious to search through all that information. Luckily for us, we can use the edit pane and hide all empty tabs that clutter your screen.

Find and Fix Errors Across Your Account

Google Ads Editor allows you to search across all your campaigns and ads so that when an error pops up in one ad group or Campaign (e.g., missing images), you’ll find out exactly how many other places it’s showing up!

Google Ads Editor: Top Functions 

Make multiple changes at once 

Add Campaign, Ad Group and Keywords

You can use Google AdWords to create new ad groups & campaigns and post them. To upload the different keywords from your Google Sheets, find Keywords in the Editor and select them on the account level.

Want to know how to make these changes all at once? Follow the steps below:

After that, simply copy and paste your keywords from Google Sheets into the Editor.

With the option “Check changes,” you can review if everything is correct before you post anything and then click Process. This will upload your campaign structure to the Editor.

Then, you can…

Upload Ads

Here, we can see the sheet with ad structure for a new campaign we want to upload. 

From left to right, you can see the account level, ad level, and type of ad (we choose RSA here). After you choose the headlines and descriptions you want to upload, go to the option Make Multiple Changes.

Also, there is another option you can see in the Multiple Changes box that appears. 

With option number 1, you can choose that your data includes columns for campaigns and ad groups like in the Google Sheet above. 

With option number 2, you can choose that your data doesn’t contain them by clicking on Selected Destination and choosing the campaign/ad group where you want to upload the ads.

Copy or Move Items

Since Making Multiple Changes at once makes the Editor the big boss of working on multiple PPC campaigns, here’s another sweet option that will make your job a whole lot easier. 

Imagine you are working on a complex number of campaigns with various geo-targeting. Editing them can seem like a never-ending task. So, to simplify the process, you can copy and paste big bulks of assets like ad groups and keywords into various campaigns and accounts. 

You only need to build the Campaign once instead of multiple times, right-click Copy, and then paste the campaign material where you need it.

Allocate Negative Keywords Across Multiple Accounts

Here’s a hack: if you’d like to allocate a list of negative keywords common for audiences in all your Google Adwords accounts, you can try this recent application in the Editor tool’s Shared Library.

The screenshot below shows the tool’s name, “shared negative keyword lists,” and what the tool offers.

Now, you can search your accounts and dig for types of negative keywords from different campaigns, how many keywords they have, and how many campaigns is this keyword list related to. After you review the keywords, you can connect them with other campaigns by adding campaign associations.

Apply Custom Rules to Multiple Campaigns

Custom rules let you tailor your ads for the best possible performance.

You can create reminders to optimize extensions, fix broken links, tweak ad copy in new campaigns, or remove poor-performing advertisements.

Let’s take a look at the screenshot below:

On the right-hand side is a box where you can customize violations and warnings for your campaigns and bidding.

“Violation criteria” lets you instruct the AdWords Editor to notify you of specific violations to best practices before posting any changes, allowing you to access those errors and remove them quickly.

How cool is that?

Don’t Forget the Extensions

When running search ads, you want to remember the vital part: extensions. Smartly written extensions can rank your ads to the stars and boost your click-through rate.

If you want to edit extensions, find them in the Shared Library and add them to your campaign.

You can add one new extension with the Add Shared Callout Extensions. But existing extensions can only be added on the account level within the same category of changes.

 Or you can add them in bulk with the option: make multiple changes.

Here’s the list of ad extensions AdWords Editor allows:

• Sitelinks Extensions
• Structured Snippet Extensions
• Location Extensions
• Price Extensions
• Callout Extensions
• App Extensions
• Call Extensions
• Promotion Extensions
• Message Extensions
• Image Extensions
• Lead Form Extensions 
• Hotel Callout

Remove Repeating Keywords

The first rule of PPC: don’t bid yourself!

We’re kidding. But accidents can happen, especially if you’re allocating keywords among ad groups or simply making multiple changes across your Google Ads Account.

Using Google Ads Editor, again, makes things easy-peasy. Here, the Find duplicate keywords feature can help you identify duplicate, repeated keywords in the same ad group, Campaign, or account.

On the left-hand side, you can tick checkboxes to choose where to look for duplicate keywords.

You can make this search even more precise on the right by telling the tool where to look for different keyword doppelgangers by choosing word order, match type, and locations. You can also hide the duplicates without removing them.

Run TrueView Video Campaigns

You can create and manage interactive TrueView video campaigns in Google Ads Editor on YouTube or across the broader network of sites. TrueView Campaigns are fantastic because they allow you to engage prospective new customers.

What can you edit in these video campaigns?

• CTAs
• Headlines and number of headline fields
• Tweak & manage paid video ads

…and more!

Smart Budgeting

Managing your PPC budget is vital to ensure you spend only a little. This way, if there are lower-than-expected impressions or clicks for a campaign, it will be easy to know how much more advertising space is needed before running out of money!

Select “Recommended Budget” from within the campaigns; you can view and set this option early on to keep an eye out for overspending daily on the campaign level, account level, or ad group level, as you can see below.

 Geo-targeting

The AdWords Editor allows you to edit your target location on the right-hand side of the interface.

It’s easy to find, so ensure it’s always updated and set up correctly because you want to avoid throwing the bait for the wrong fish!

Replace Text Features

Another benefit of Google AdWords is that you don’t have to upload text changes from an Excel sheet or delete or pause old ads with unfitting copies. You can do this directly, making your online advertising job much more efficient.

How to do this?

Go to Edit in the menu bar. Then you can make multiple changes in the Text in many ways by choosing options from the drop-down menu like in the screenshot below:

Now that you’ve got the gist, here are some more options you can try to replace text with:

Now that you’ve got the gist, here are some more options you can try to replace text with:

• Capitalization – select the text you want to edit. This is an excellent feature if you’re advertising long-form content and need to change the title case to edit headlines, a sentence case, or other content within the text where you need to change capitalization.
• Append Text – You can add additional text at the beginning or end of existing items by appending it to any final URL you select.
• URLs – Select and change the URLs you want. You can completely replace them, edit the final URL or remove some of their parameters.  
• Change Bids – make multiple changes to your bids by setting limits or increasing them. You can even change bids however you want within the Google AdWords Editor.
• Replace Text – just like the other edits, you can replace Text within the existing ad copy in your ads.

Statistics in Google AdWords Editor

You can use Google Ads Editor even for viewing, importing, and downloading statistics. Let’s go over each:

Viewing and Importing Stats into Google Ads Editor

After you’ve learned how to make and post changes, we can dive into the numbers:

Google Ads Editor has a great feature that imports performance stats from your campaigns in its offline form.

You can also choose the View statistics option, which will allow importing performance stats from other sources such as Excel and Google Analytics.

Click on Get statistics to view your ad campaign’s performance in Google Ads Editor by defining the date range at the top left, and then choosing any statistic you want from among several options.

Mind this: check all the boxes for campaigns you need stats on.

Download Your Search Term Report

If things couldn’t get any better… you can start using Google Ads Editor to download your search terms, making it easy to analyze the performance of both keywords and negative keyword lists.

This tool will help you identify which phrases are triggering ads so that they’re optimized more effectively to attract people with those desires or needs – turning them into paying customers without spending any extra time/money doing sales outreach alone.

When you click Search Term Report, the window on the right appears. Here, you can choose for which Campaign you want a report, data range, and more. 

Tips for Working in AdWords Editor to Keep in Mind

To get the most out of Google Ads Editor, it’s essential to remember that it works best when it combines powers with the online interface.

Because of its many features that let you check everything you upload before it’s good to go, make sure to do so.

Yes, it’s a tool that was primarily made to make sure you save money by being unable to make changes after posting your advertisement. Still, it’s also good for preventing any damage that could come with a bunch of red exclamation marks popping up here and there.

This great tool makes the lives of PPC managers A LOT easier. After you’ve mastered it, read our blog on the Deep Baiting approach and pump up your bidding strategies!

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