Ever since the new version of Google Analytics came out earlier this year which allowed you to do date range comparisons I have been itching for the day when Adwords would include something similar. Compared to Analytics, the Adwords reporting has been a little bit behind and hadn’t been revised for some time. Now though I’m over the moon to see that they’ve added this feature.
See a screenshot of it in action:
You access this under the account snapshot tab within Adwords and it works in a very similar way to the date range comparison within Google Analytics. This is a big plus for Adwords and will make analysing the performance of accounts and campaigns much easier.
Note that they still have a few bugs to iron out, such as determining when a stat should be green or red. As you can see in the next screen shot where the most recent date range has a higher CPC and a higher cost/conversion. Both of those changes are green (for good!) but those are both negative changes.
Regardless of the bugs though I’m over the moon about this. I’m probably not the first to blog about this, but I certainly haven’t seen mention of this anywhere else online so I thought I’d blog it.
Tom Critchlow Tom Critchlow is VP Operations for the NYC office, living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. Fiercely curious about most things and passionate about everything.
Analytics had a similar green / red issue with bounce rate when they first launched the comparison figure. They got on top of it pretty quickly – hopefully the AdWords guys will as well.
Nice spot
nice, they are really doing their job to make it easier for us to do ours
I just logged into Adwords and noticed the option right away. I did a quick search on Google to see what was going on and came across this. Thanks for the updates!