josebrwn - 12:57 am on Oct 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hey Adwords Advisor,

We get email reports for one client. Today, all we got was a letter, with a bad link (404 not found), saying

"The report you requested is now available for viewing or downloading via your Reports Download Center:
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=DownloadCenter."

Well DUH! My report is now available on the internet. Gee shucks. How about just sending me the report like you're supposed to? Do I need to beg for it?

For our other clients, we get the reports by hitting a URL that describes the report we want with querystring parameters. In an application. It used to be, you could hit one URL for every client. Now that's different. You hit one URL, then you wait for your report, an arbitrary length of time, and then you refresh some page with cool graphics on it, and then you get a page full of reports and you have to pick the one out that you just ran. Same report, same name, same data, but different URL for each. Try to access that report via an application and what do you get back? Some weird encoded file that isn't even ANSI! CSV, TSV, XML, doesn't matter.

What's wrong with hitting ONE URL AND GETTING BACK AN ANSI FILE?

This is what the biggest customers want. The people who butter your bread. But you don't LISTEN. You build what you want, how you want.

Overture has an API. Every day, every standard report is available at the same time. You just say, "Hey Overture, give me my report". And Overture says, "Here you go, sir!" With Google, it's more like you have to beg for your reports, and you'd BETTER feel lucky if and when you get them.

I got an email from Google about this before it shipped. Get this:

"Key benefits of this upgrade include:

* Reliability and Performance. Get reports of any size, every time. "

Let me tell you: this is a bald-faced lie. We get that one report via email because there's a 64k record limit on web reports and a 100k record limit on email reports, and neither is good enough but 100k is better than 64k.

So I went to the "download center" and sat in front of my computer and watched the cool graphics as my report was built (oooh, how exciting!) and then went to a page and lo there was three copies of my report. Each a different URL, all the same report. So I download it and you know what I get? 100k records. That is a far cry from "reports of any size, every time" being as we have a half million records you're billing us for.

Which leads me to another issue. Who else in the entire world has the gall to refuse to offer their clients complete, itimized billing? That is what these reports are, an itemized bill. Google absolutely refuses to make such a report available, instead making useless features for web clickers and dissing their biggest clients.

Yahoo/Overture does 70% of the revenue for us on 30% of the volume. Guess where our budget is shifting?

Your fan,
Joe