Google Analytics Features I'd Like To See #1

[netmeg]

- In some cases it only seems to be reporting around 60% of the actual traffic. Not sure how or why that is happening, but we host 250 sites here, and have all the actual logfiles and several analyzers running, and we remove all the bots and our own traffic, and it STILL shows as way low in some cases. Examples available upon request.

- How about a general repository for us to share filters? I'm thinking of something along the lines of the way Google offers widgets and gadgets and whatnot for iGoogle and Desktop. I've created some and gone out and found some out there that did things I didn't even realize were possible; why re-invent the wheel?

- I find the breadcrumb navigation somewhat lacking. There's a lot of times where I'm digging down deep to the keyword level, and I want to go back just one step, and I end up back about four levels, or worse yet, where I started.

- Much more help on setting up to track other types of campaigns (MSN and Yahoo PPC, online campaigns, offline campaigns)

- For those of us who are working with clients (as opposed to just our own accounts) it would be really great to be able to set up some kind of a demo account with some demo stats (or have one available) to show to clients. To be honest, they'd rather have me show them the benefits step by step with an account that looks like their traffic and their sample products than sit through your presentation. I can't show one client another's data, and they just don't seem to get how useful and important this information is unless they can see it and click on it and I can explain it in terms of their business.

Ok, that's for starters. I have more.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Your latest feedback is now in this week's report, netmeg. Many thanks, as always.

The report will be going about in about 10 to 11 hours from the time I post this - so still lots of time (not to mention room in the report) for more.

Thanks in advance. ;)

AWA

[AdWordsAdvisor]

24 hours to go, roughly, before the next report is sent.

I'll happily pass along your feedback - and I really hate to let the WebmasterWorld Product Requests go empty. :)

Unless, of course, it means that AdWords is now perfect, heheh. That'd be really good news.

AWA

[AdWordsAdvisor]

It's kind of embarrassing to have the last three posts be my own, but I guess I can live with it. ;)

In any case, I am posting yet again with this update:

Friday is a holiday here in the US (Independence Day) and I'd like to get the Advertiser Feedback Report out much earlier than usual so folks will see it before they head out for a long weekened (or, so that they will take it with them, heheh.)

In any case, I'll be sending it around 6:00 PM PST, rather than the more usual time of somewhere between 10:00 PM and Midnight. I'll include any new feedback posted here by then.

Everything up till now is already included - and I'll check back just before I send the report.

Thanks in advance. ;)

AWA

[AdWordsAdvisor]

OK, make that four posts in a row by me. (Is that pathetic?)

I am running late (no surprise there, actually) - 45 minutes to go for your late-breaking comments. :)

OK, I now resolve to post no more in this thread until there is an idea or two between this post and my next post here. :)

AWA

[moderngamer]

Would still like to see Impression Share reporting available at the Ad Group level please.

Thanks awa

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Wooohooo, a post not by me!

Got it moderngamer - just now copy/pasted into this week's report. ;)

Thanks!

Plenty o' time for more, of course, before the report goes out Thursday night.

AWA

[dr1zz]

I would love the ability to see the average position of an ad. You can already see this when you do a report but as far as I know you can't see it in the old OR new interface.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I would love the ability to see the average position of an ad. You can already see this when you do a report but as far as I know you can't see it in the old OR new interface.

I think I'll need a bit more detail on this one. First off, do you mean the average position of an ad as compared to other ads in an ad group?

And if that is correct, do you mean the position of that ad per keyword? Or across all keywords in the ad group, or?

I may be missing it entirely - and if so, my apology.

Thanks!

AWA

[cline]

In the new interface, in the Adgroup view, I wish the performance data for the content network were somewhere above the pagefold rather than at the bottom. One should be able to see summary data about the adgroup without scrolling.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Thanks cline - your feedback is now copy/pasted into this week's Advertiser Feedback Report, and will be seen by the 'new UI' team shortly.

Still a couple of hours to go if anyone else has feeback they'd like to put in front of the right folks. It's a pretty good way to get heard.

AWA

[cline]

In the new interface, the column widths seem to be unnecessarily wide. My monitor resolution is 1920x1200 and sometimes I have to horizontally scroll. According to stats from one of my high-traffic clients, less than 3% of internet users have resolutions this high, and less than 0.5% have resolutions higher than this. Push on your designers to tighten the presentation. They can do it if they try.

[RhinoFish]

in both the old interface and new one, the looping checker you've added to police the "One display URL domain per ad group" is making me NUTS!

i have a client that has more than one domain. for an existing campaign, they've decided to land people on that other domain. i paused the ad group, gave it some time for the pause to unfold and take hold, and then i begin editing the display urls and destination urls to point to the new landing page. after several minutes, your policing checker says my ads are disapproved because the ad group has a mix of domains in it. there isn't enough time for me to complete the edits before you loop in and disapprove. so i try to work faster, to get them all switched before the checker loops back in - sometimes, i finish in just a couple of minutes and think all is fine, but the checker was working in the background... and it posts a few minutes later that some of my ads are disapproved because they're mixing domains (they're not, once i finish editing).

so now i'm going to go delete all of the ads. and re-enter them as new ads with the new domain. very inefficient for me. and i'm hoping the policing checker likes this method!

and i'm hoping tons of disapproved ads don't reflect poorly on me as an MCC administrator.

if that delete and add plan also fails, i guess i'll have to delete the entire campaign and start the whole thing over?

suggest you tell your checker to chill time wise - to allow people who have no intention of breaking the rules - to edit all of their ads when doing a switchover.

meanwhile, one of my large clients is getting ad disapproved emails...

[tim222]

I'm still geting used to the AdWords interface so I don't know if this is already possible, but it would be nice if there was a way to more easily investigate the websites that appear in the Automatic Placement listing.

When I view the placements, sometimes I want to visit a site before deciding to exclude it or manage the placement. So I've been copying the URL and then pasting it into a new browser to check out the site. I don't know if it's worthwhile to look at them one-at-a-time, but that's what I've been doing. Does anyone else do this?

Anyway, I think it would be easier if I could click on an icon or link to open the site in a new window.

[RhinoFish]

In the new interface, the numbers on my far right column are being cut off. I don't mean I have to scroll to see them, I mean the border ends and I can't see the full number.

It seems to happen if I switch accounts (using my MCC), and just on that first page that loads, the campaign summary page. If I delve down into the account and then return to that same page, it's fine.

Firefox/3.5.1

[Brecon]

I often do reviews of people's AdWords accounts but what I find frustrating is that the options available for access are

1) They send an invitation that I can't accept because I have already used my Google account for previous reviews. I then have to set up a new Google account just for this.

2) Request access through the MCC (preferable). However if they already have someone linked in this way then it won't work... which happens pretty often.

3) Get their username and password - very unsecure which is what the other options are set up to avoid.

Basically I am wondering if there could be a way to grant 'review' access to an account that gets round these problems. (In a way similar to the 'view reports only' setting in analytics?

[AdWordsAdvisor]

All the feedback posted here since last week will be sent in this evenings Advertiser Feedback Report - as has been the case for years now.

I predict the report will go out about 12 hours from the time I post this, give or take an hour.

Lots of time for additional feedback, so please feel free to add yours. ;)

Thanks!

AWA

[Sujan]

Billing -> Billing Summary -> Export:
Please add the client/account id into the filename or somewhere into the file (e.g. first line). The current state require unnecessary manual edits to archive or process these files.

Thanks.

[netmeg]

In the new UI you can see which keywords have a low search volume, which is great. However, I like to move those off into their own ad group, and I mostly actually *work* in the AdWords Editor. Would love to be able to see LSV keywords in the editor, or else make it easier in the UI to segment them off and move them to another ad group. I see I can copy them (not move them) but the process is a little clumsy.

[Sujan]

Please give My Client Center some love. There are so many new and nice features for the Billing Summary of normal accounts, but none in MCC accounts. And that's just the area where I could really need one (export to Spreadsheets) right now as an example.

- Jan

[AdWordsAdvisor]

All of the latest posts have now been included, verbatim, in this week's Advertiser Feedback Report.

Still plenty of time for any additional comments you might care to add, as the report will not be sent for another 6 or so hours.

Thanks very much!

AWA

[Dlocks]

New interface:

01. Select keywords I would like to edit.
02. Click on 'edit'.
03. All keywords are visible. Even the keywords I don't want to edit. Not user friendly.

Please only show the selected keywords after clicking on 'edit'..

[Dlocks]

New interface:

When using the option "Filter keywords" I don't see the option "Cost per conversion".

In the old interface you could filter for example all keywords with > < =< => 15 cost per conversion.

[netmeg]

In the new interface, I would really really really like the option to turn off *all* graphs, account-wide, and have them stay off until turned back on. Then if I want to see a certain graph, I can always turn it back on myself.

They *really* slow things down, and get in the way, and I don't look at them. At all. I look at numbers. Not pictures.

[RhinoFish]

on account entry, the learn more about the new interface bubble is getting annoying. i've closed that box like a hundred times. i've followed it too. please add a dismiss link.

[netmeg]

One of my twitter friends was ranting this afternoon about the fact that there's no way to copy all the keywords in an ad group anymore in the UI - you used to be able to do that by clicking on the Edit Keywords link - it was very useful for a number of reasons; it was fast, it was easy - and now it's gone.

[netmeg]

Here's something I think would be a good idea, specially for those of us who have been using AdWords for years and years and moving ad groups and campaigns around.

How about when you delete a campaign or an ad group, if AdWords did something like append a date (-20090806 for example) to the name of the campaign or ad group, so if you want to use the name again, you don't have to go digging back to rename the old one before creating the new. Seems like I have to do this a lot; my clients products come and go, and my names tend to be descriptive. But I'm prevented from starting a new campaign or ad group with that name until I go dig out the old deleted one and rename THAT. Let's make it automatic.

[RhinoFish]

i have a couple of accounts that are running Click-To-Play (CTP) video ads - and have been for a long time. in the old interface, i can still see the ads, the play rate stats, and everything else about them is normal. in May, i got a notice that the CTP format was being converted and the editing would be found in the new interface within the dynamic ad builder. when i look there, i can't see these existing, running ads listed there. if i click over to the old interface, there they are. in the new inteface, i know to look within the display ad builder, under "rich media and video", but they aren't listed there, nor under my Ads tab. if i do go to add a new video ad in the new interface, i can see the video files i previously uploaded in the ad builder wizard under rich media and video. the notice earlier said my click-to-play ads would automatically be converted to the new format.

so either they didn't get converted or they're not visible in the new interface (including i may just not know how to view them properly). if they didn't get converted, i doubt the base video files would be there in the new interface and that they'd be running and posting stats in the old interface. so...

i checked the column customization thing from the ads tab (and i checked the help files). but it's as if the new interface doesn't yet have the features to see them yet. is that the case?

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I will of course be passing the latest feedback along to the right folks later this evening - probably about 11 hours from now.

Still plenty of time for more.

All feedback regarding the new AdWords interface goes into the Advertiser Feedback Report and is also sent directly to the entire 'new UI team' - per their request.

Many thanks, as always.

AWA

[netmeg]

I *liked* being able to see the bid type on the campaign overview - which campaigns were using conversion optimizer, etc. Now I have to go dig it out; there's apparently no way to display it on the campaign tab. Would like that back.

[netmeg]

Don't like having to jump through these hoops to get to spreadsheet edit. It should be readily available without having to go to the AD GROUP in the LEFT SIDE NAVIGATION (who does that?)