If you can create an output of your keywords as a csv or excel sheet using a report or a bulk download feature in your account (if you have one) you should be able to find the duplicates by using excel and conditional formating.
Lets say you have 200 keywords in column A, from row 1-200
Select that column, and go to FORMAT > conditional Formating:
Choose "formula is" from the first dropdown and paste the following: =IF(COUNTIF(A1:A200, A1)>1,TRUE,FALSE)
Select the format button and change it something other then the default ( highlighted yellow for example), then hit OK.
If all goes well it should highlight all duplicated terms. The downside is if a term appears 5 times it wil highlight 4 of them and not highlight the last...as long as you then search for anything in adwords that has been highlighted in excel, you should be able to remove all the duplicates.
I am pretty sure google does not yet have a built in tool in adwords to this...they should think about creating one, because it is very difficult any other way.
I am pretty sure google does not yet have a built in tool in adwords to this...they should think about creating one, because it is very difficult any other way.
You are correct on all counts, werty. No, there is not currently a tool to facilitate this sort of search within an AdWords account, and yes, we should think about creating one. ;)
I was about 95% sure that there is not a built-in tool to do this, but pinged the team who is responsible for cross-campaign tool development, just to confirm.
They essentially said "No, not yet - but good idea.", so I think we can consider this idea officially passed on to the right team. ;)
AWA
I am worried that these duplicate words are competing against eachother. Is that true?
Yes, in a very real sense, it is.
The AdWords system is built on the concept that advertisers really want to do what they've said they want to do, as they create their accounts. So when you use a keyword, the system assumes that you want your ad to show on that keyword.
If you use the same keyword in multiple places, our system will assume you meant to do that - but, at the same time, it is designed to show only one ad per keyword, per search query. So the system has to decide which of the several ads using that keyword to show.
So, in this sense, the keywords are competing with each other, and it gives you less control. For these reasons, I'd tend to avoid using the same keywords in multiple places - unless you have specific reasons for doing so.
Maybe others could jump in, if they've found good reasons for using the same keywords in multiple places.
AWA
AWA, we're sometimes confused *how* the system picks it choice from duplicates - could you explain this a bit more?
I don't want to bid more than $.05 for a Content ad, because the conversion rate is low, but for Search, I want to bid more. So I put the same keyword(s) in two different compaigns:
Campaign 1 does not use Content.
Campaign 2 uses Content.
Campaign 1 has $1.00 max CPC.
Campaign 2 has $.05 max CPC.
