Exporting Negative Keyword List

[sem4u]

Is there any method of exporting the campaign negative keyword list?

I tried briefly using the AdWords Editor software, but I couldn't see how to export a list of negative keywords on their own.

[poster_boy]

Seems like sort of a no-brainer feature, huh? Unfortunately, I think the answer is 'no'.

With all the great tools being added, it's a bit of a surprise to me that greater control of negative keywords haven't been among the more highly prioritized changes... ability to import/export a list, ability to assign a set of global negative keywords to an account, negative keyword stats (how many ads were blocked?), etc.

[flobaby]

The easiest way I've found is highlight all the negative words, copy them (Ctl-C), go to Excel, right click "paste special", paste as text. They'll paste into 3 columns which you can rearrange into one.

[OceanDoctor]

I use essentially the same approach as flobaby, with the following two refinements:

1. If you start selecting text with the first keyword on the first line, you'll end up with some/all of the words on the first line with leading spaces. To prevent that, I start selecting text at the line above where it says, "select all."

2. If some of your negative keywords have quotes (") around them, they'll disappear when you paste into Excel. This seems to work differently depending on the browser you're using. I haven't figured out an easy workaround for Firefox (my preferred browser), so I use IE for this operation. After copying the keywords (and line above per #1) paste (NOT special) into Excel. By not using paste/special, it'll look funky but should give you four columns. Now, in Excel highlight the funky looking keywords you just copied in (sans the first line which contains the "select all" text) and paste/special/values to a clean part of the spreadsheet. You should end up with four non-funky looking columns of keywords with double quotes preserved.

I suspect it's not a coincidence that we just went through this over the weekend as we began our exodus from AdWords in earnest following the mayhem created by the recent "Quality Score" changes. I hope we can help each other with additional tips on making the transition to adCenter, Yahoo, Ask, Kanoodle, etc. easier.

[vphoner]

Yes, I just opened up accounts with all those search engines. Its amazing how google just threw away advertisers. They will pay for this move by losing market share as the others get richer from us. I guess its poetic justice for a company that became arrogant to its bread and butter customers.

[OceanDoctor]

Just discovered an easier way to export negative keywords. Using AdWords Editor, use the "Export to .CSV" function and your negative words will appear at the top of each campaign. The exodus continues...

[spacedog]

On the same topic of AdWords Editor (the downloadable software), is there any quick, automated way of duplicating/cloning full ad groups or (especially!) entire campaigns? If not, is there a simple multi-step process anyone here uses?

I couldn't see an obvious way, looking through the menus. And in the AdWords web interface (not the software), there seems to be no way to easily duplicate campaigns or ad groups to my knowledge (in the ad group case, short of doing it manually using the keyword & ad text copy tool; but this is slow and buggy and often the copied keywords don't appear in the new group in my experience).

When creating a new campaign using the web interface, it has an option to let you copy settings from another campaign, but only copies ONE ad group (the first listed), and only its settings and ad text. I don't think it even copies over the keywords.

If you try to use the keyword copy tool and specify more than one ad group at a time, it errors out with the message that multiple ad group copying is not supported at this time. I thought the AdWords Editor would allow more flexibility than these hindrances of the web interface, but perhaps not. My goal is to duplicate entire campaigns, each having multiple ad groups.

[OceanDoctor]

I'm not sure if the AdWords Editor has such capabilities, but on the AdWords web site Google provides some helpful tools. Under "Campaign Management," click "Tools", then under " Modify Your Campaigns" click on "Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text."

This allows you to move or copy all the keywords and, optionally, the ads themselves from one AdGroup to another. Note that using the tool will trigger an editorial review. Hope this helps.

[sem4u]

I have tried using the "Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text" tool but it won't allow you to create a new AdGroup with it, e.g. I cannot copy an AdGroup from one campaign to another. You have to add it to an existing AdGroup, unless I am missing something...

[OceanDoctor]

I ran into the same issue. Unless I'm also missing something, you do have to create the AdGroups first. I just added a single keyword and text ad to each new AdGroup, then ran the utility to copy over the keywords and text ads. Not ideal, but still faster, especially if you're copying over several text ads per AdGroup.