Google AdWords Reporting: How to Use AdWords Reports

This is the second post in a series on getting the most out of the Google AdWords left nav. We?ve done several similar posts in recent months designed to help advertisers better understand all of the features and functionality available to them within the AdWords interface. The first post in this series focused on the Google AdWords shared library, and this post will walk through Google AdWords reports within the AdWords left navigation.

Pre-Set AdWords Reports

Not unlike the reporting capabilities you?d find in the AdWords dimensions tab, within the reporting section in the left navigation you?re offered a series of standard reports:

• Keyword report
• Campaign report
• Geographic report
• Demographic report

These are actually just links to reports that live in other areas, though ? the geographic report and demographic report will kick you over to reports in the dimensions tab, and the keyword and campaign reports push you into the standard reporting functionality in the keyword and campaign tabs. This is a great example of how confusing and complex the AdWords interface has become: these reports are available deep within the interface, but because there are so many moving pieces within AdWords they?ve floated them up, positioning them within a reports section within the persistent left navigation.

Managing Your Recurring Google AdWords Reports

One of the functionalities not present in the dimensions tab (and the most useful feature of the reporting section available in the AdWords left nav) is the ability to manage all of your reports ? both historical and regular reports.

As you can see, once you?ve run a report you can go back into your reporting history and set reports to:

• Be run against different date ranges
• Be emailed to the account owner or specific email addresses
• Be run on a recurring basis (such as weekly or monthly)

This is particularly helpful if you have multiple stakeholders working to manage and keep tabs on the same account. This is functionality that previously lived along with the reports themselves in the AdWords reporting tab, and that was displaced for many advertisers when Google updated the interface. If you?re managing multiple campaigns or just have a number of different responsibilities on your plate, being able to quickly control and update the reports that you?re having pushed at you periodically is really valuable, as you can stay better organized and have data delivered to you without having to jump into AdWords and run the same report weekly/monthly/etc.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM LLC, a boutique search marketing agency offering search marketing consulting services including pay-per-click account management, a comprehensive SEO audit, content marketing services, and a variety of link building packages such as guest posts or blogging strategy.

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

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/03/05/adwords-reports

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