It used to be that if you wanted to compare time periods for your Google Adwords campaign you would have to either;
1. Export results for each of them then compare
2. Look at the limited information in Google Analytics
3. Look on Dimensions tab to compare a week to week or month to month.
These were all annoying and imperfect solutions, which is why I was so excited about the new date comparison in Google Adwords. No longer will the ‘compare dates’ button only allow you to change the graph, now you can see the comparative data as detailed as the keyword level!
You can look at comparative data on the campaign, adgroup, ads or keywords tabs.When choosing your time period, click on ‘Compare Dates’ at the bottom, then choose a time to compare it to.
Expand any column that has a ‘+’ at the top.
This will expand to show you two columns for the periods you are comparing, as well as an absolute change and a percentage change. You can sort by any of these four columns by clicking on the heading of it.
Examples of Ways to Use it
If a campaign is much more expensive than last week.
1. Expand on cost, then click on the latest date range to sort this column by most expensive to least expensive.
2. See which adgroups or keywords have seen the biggest cost changes
3. Look in the Conversions and CPA column – if there are no corresponding increases in conversions, there could be a problem.
4. Look in the CPC and impressions column – are there big changes there? Where is the increase in cost coming from?
If a campaign/adgroup is getting a lot less sales than last week
1. Expand the conversions column
2. Sort by clicking on the last weeks stats to see where the most sales were last week, and compare to this week.
3. Expand CTR, Average Position and Impression columns to see the changes for those keywords that lost a lot of sales.
If a campaign has a lot less traffic than last week
1. Expand on the Clicks column and sort by the ‘change’ column to see where the biggest fall was
2. Expand Impressions, CTR and Average Position to see which of these have changed the most
These are just a few examples, there are a lot of ways to use this reporting feature, especially to quickly check changes in your campaigns.
