Search Engine Tigers

With the need to transfer some campaigns from one account to another we hit upon the idea of using the nifty free downloadable tool direct from Google – Adwords Editor. This allows you to make bulk changes to your account while offline, get them just how you want them, then upload them back to Google. This worked fantastically for us, much easier than deleting and re-adding the campaigns by hand. Within an hour or so the campaigns were re-assigned and up and running in their new accounts.

Then we noticed the problem, our geo-targeted campaigns were now generating a lot of impressions and clicks. Going into the campaigns we noticed that the geo-targeting was now lost, and the campaigns all had a “All Countries and Territories” scope. This wasn’t a good thing, as these campaigns were for local companies, and we don’t want to be paying for people in Seattle, WA clicking to view a website for a landscaper in Fairfax, VA (let alone people in Bangalore). Contacting Google, they promised to investigate, and within 2 days of us contacting them they informed us that

Currently within AdWords Editor, campaigns using regional targeting may revert to targeting “All Countries and Territories” upon being transferred from one account to another… I understand you were unaware of this feature…

They then went on to give us a credit for that day on all clicks during the affected time (about $200). The wording in the email is interesting though, apparently a ‘feature’ is something that ‘may’ happen…

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