So I can't check the reports for April, 14th, against my Apache logfiles for that day. I could generate new logfiles that cover the time from 9 o'clock April 14th to 9 o'clock April 15th, but that really is no good solution.
My clients would not accept that - and for me it's not optimal too. I need an reliable overview about my (real) day to make decisions.
Do you have an idea how I could handle that?
Best surely would be if the Adwords team could add the possibility to enter my time-zone or time-difference and generate the stats appropriately. But I know it's lots of work to do that, so I'm not too optimistic. I hope AWA will anyhow forward the request to the tech-team.
- Jan
PS: Alternative approach: Establish the possibility to generate reports for hours, not only days. Then I could generate reports from 15 o'clock day 1 to 15 o'clock day 2 and compore this with my logfiles. Not so "clean" like my other suggestion, but also works perfectly for us here in Europe.
I even like it more because it opens other possibilities to work with :)
Well as the saying goes, If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain
I also would prefer the second option, but entering my time zone also would be okay. Please AdwordsAdvisor, include this thread in you feedback too. I think there are thousands of other advertisers that would like that feature.
Additionally, I forgot to mention in my first post, there are merchants that provide the stats for a compete day. I know these sales or actions happened from 15 o'clock day 1 to 15 o'clock day 2 (Adwords time) but have no possibility to compare them more directly to the numbers AdWords provides. And here I can't add some hours to make it fit :(
- Jan
I'm very busy these days, improving my adwords accounts and campaigns. One of the main tools for that are, of course, my logfiles and the numbers Google gives me. But there is a problem: Adwords is US - and I'm German. So there is a difference of 9 hours, if it's a new day for adwords we already had our breakfast and are ready to work (9 o'clock in the morning).
So I can't check the reports for April, 14th, against my Apache logfiles for that day. I could generate new logfiles that cover the time from 9 o'clock April 14th to 9 o'clock April 15th, but that really is no good solution.
My clients would not accept that - and for me it's not optimal too. I need an reliable overview about my (real) day to make decisions.Best surely would be if the Adwords team could add the possibility to enter my time-zone or time-difference and generate the stats appropriately. But I know it's lots of work to do that, so I'm not too optimistic. I hope AWA will anyhow forward the request to the tech-team.
Absolutely - I'd be happy to pass your idea on, Sujan. It's a great idea, but also a pretty hard nut to crack in a seamless way. Here is just one scenario that illustrates the difficulty, and which has occasionally caused me to lose some sleep:
Let's first imagine tens of thousands of advertisers in 24 time zones, some of whom are choosing to view their stats in their own time zone.
Others choose to view their stats in what you might call Google Time (PST).
Still others change their time zone settings daily, or perhaps even more often - depending on factors such as where their clients are, etc.
Then imagine a large number of emails and phone calls being answered, from various offices located in various places (and time zones) world wide.
Then, remember that answering most advertiser questions requires that the stats be synched up so that advertiser and Support folks are seeing roughly the same thing - but that by definition an email is describing something that happened in the past - when a time zone setting may have been different. And so on.
It isn't as straightforward a 'problem' as it might appear at first glance.
You can bet that we understand and appreciate the value in your suggestion though. And it'd probably be safe to assume that some thought is being devoted to this already. ;)
AWA
I did some timezone-sync work too and I totally agree: it can suck. Support can be hell and it can get quite hard to manage the system at all. But it needn't to suck, and I'm sure your developers are clever enough to find a way to handle this problem.
Every account hast an ID, every ID has a "system timezone", every ID has a user with a "local timezone". And then there is Google Time. If the supporters can see the "system timezone" of the ID calling or mailing, and have a sheet to convert it to there local time then it should not be a big problem. Of course there would be some addiditional mails asking for timezone or system time, but it would really be great for advertisers.
Thanks.
- Jan
PS: If you're working on that, perhaps you could let us break down the day to hours too... ;)
Best surely would be if the Adwords team could add the possibility to enter my time-zone or time-difference and generate the stats appropriately.
That would be cool!
You can bet that we understand and appreciate the value in your suggestion though. And it'd probably be safe to assume that some thought is being devoted to this already.
Even cooler!
I can't imagine Google engineers not being clever enough to deal with the difficulties involved.
