7 Google Ads Shortcuts Every PPC Manager Should Be Using via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson
Managing PPC accounts is already time-consuming, especially when attention gets pulled toward tasks that don’t meaningfully impact performance.
Over time, accounts accumulate extra keywords, inconsistent negatives, and small inefficiencies that make everyday management harder than it needs to be.
Fortunately, Google Ads includes several built-in tools that help streamline these tasks.
These seven shortcuts can help you manage accounts more efficiently while also surfacing insights faster, so you can spend more time improving performance instead of maintaining clutter.
1. Remove Duplicate Keywords
As accounts mature or change management over time, it can be easy to lose track of what keywords are being bid on.
This is especially true when one account manager structures campaigns and ad groups a certain way, and then another manager takes over and starts implementing their own structure.
It would be time-consuming to comb through all the account keywords to find duplicates.
Luckily, the Google Ads Editor has a very handy feature that will do this for you!
You can access it from the top menu under Tools.
The duplicate keywords tool gives you many options so you can be intentional in how it defines duplicate keywords.
For example, you can choose a strict word order or any word order.
You may want to choose a strict word order if you’re mostly concerned with Exact Match keywords.
But any word order can be a great way to clear out broad match searches or phrases that are just the same words in a different order.
You’re able to scope the keyword duplicates tool from:
- Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns.
- Display, Video, and Demand Gen campaigns.
Another helpful option to be mindful of is the one for Location of duplicates.
An example of why you might want it only looking at certain groups would be if you have campaigns that are duplicates but set to show to different devices or different geographies.
They’re intentionally duplicated in those instances, so you’d only want to check for duplicates within each individual campaign.
2. Use Negative Keyword Lists
Since we’re on the topic of keywords, let’s switch to a feature that will help you organize negative keywords in an account.
Negative keyword lists are a great way to exclude specific categories of keywords across multiple campaigns or the entire account.
As with trying to find duplicate keywords, it can be time-consuming to go through all the negative keywords that have been added to a campaign or ad group over time.
Negative keyword lists allow you to group certain keywords together into a list and can then be attached to different campaigns.
You can find this in the Google Ads online interface by going to Tools >> Shared Library >> Exclusion lists. From there, you’ll find a tab for “Negative keyword lists” or “Placement exclusion lists.”
For example, you may already have a huge list of irrelevant keywords that you wouldn’t want to show up for any campaign.
Create an “Irrelevant Keywords” (or whatever you choose to name it) list, and apply that keyword list to all campaigns in the account.
Another example of how to use negative keyword lists is to separate branded terms from non-branded terms.
Simply create a negative keyword list of all brand terms, searches, or phrases, and attach that list to all non-brand campaigns.
This ensures that there’s no crossover between brand and non-brand performance.
3. Use Labels To Manage Ad Creatives
The Label function in Google Ads is a powerhouse for account organization and time-saving.
In my opinion, it’s one of the most under-appreciated features in Google Ads.
While labels can be added to a campaign, ad group, and keyword level, using them for time-sensitive copy or routine testing to turn things off/on is where it shines!
It is also a huge help if you want to compare higher-level messaging or before/after efforts with copy tests.
You can add a label to any ad by checking the box next to the ad versions you want to label and then choosing Label in the blue toolbar that appears:
You can then check the labels you want to apply to those ads or create a new label.
In this example, they want to easily test a new message related to a specific promotion happening on their website. There isn’t an easy way to see a comparison without filtering for each ad type.
Labeling each ad quickly makes it easier.
Another handy way to use labels and ads is for scheduling.
After you label the ads as outlined above, select the ones that you want to turn on for a certain date and time. Check the box next to the ads, and then go to the blue toolbar and click on Edit.
From here, you can create rules for all the ads you selected with all kinds of timing and condition parameters.
You’d repeat this step each time you want something to turn off and then also to turn on.
4. Quickly Test Campaign Elements With Experiments
Speaking of streamlining ad creation and testing, another handy way to do this is by using the Experiments feature.
This is located under the Campaigns section on the left-hand menu.
Click on the “All experiments” section, and then click the blue “plus” (+) button to start creating your own custom experiment.
From there, you’ll be able to choose from multiple options:
- Performance Max experiment.
- Demand Gen experiment.
- Video experiment.
- App uplift experiment.
- Custom experiment.
- Optimize text ads.
One of the things I love about this option is you have the ability to set up the percentage split of your audience.
It can help you force a 50/50 split, whereas in regular ad testing, Google auto-optimizes.
Another thing I love about experiments is that it’s easy to indicate if there’s a clear winner.
In the example above, one of the experiments run showed a statistically significant change in clicks. This made it an easy decision to apply the experiment to the original campaign for better performance.
5. Use Notations For Important Account Changes
Keeping a log of an account history can be tough in Google Ads. There are so many moving parts, outside things that influence results, and then multiple people managing an account over its lifespan.
This can create issues when trying to analyze performance.
For example, you’re looking at year-over-year data and notice the numbers were so much better the previous year. Why?
It could be due to certain holidays that fall on different dates each year.
Or, maybe the brand got a huge PR bump that caused a lot of attention and searching.
Using notes can help you log that external history and save tons of time trying to dig and piece together this kind of analysis.
How do you add notes?
First, simply click on the performance graph.
When you hover on the graph line, the date and performance metrics appear, along with a blue Add Note option. You can type your note in that.
Once you have notes in the account, they will appear as a little square along the dateline of the graph.
Clicking on it will show you the notes left and the date they were made.
6. Use Filters To Quickly Identify Optimization Opportunities
When managing a busy account, it’s easy to spend too much time scrolling through campaigns, ad groups, and keywords trying to find what needs attention.
Instead of manually digging through every view, Google Ads allows you to create filters that instantly surface areas worth reviewing.
Filters can be applied to almost any table in Google Ads, including campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and search terms. Once created, they allow you to quickly isolate specific performance conditions.
For example, you might create filters to identify:
- Keywords with high spend but zero conversions.
- Ads with a low click-through rate.
- Search terms generating high impressions but few clicks.
- Campaigns pacing ahead or behind budget.
Creating a filter is simple. In most table views, click the Filter icon at the top of the table and define the conditions you want to see.
Once saved, filters can be reused anytime you review that view.
Over time, this becomes one of the fastest ways to spot inefficiencies or optimization opportunities without manually reviewing every row of data.
Instead of searching for problems, filters bring the most important ones directly to you.
7. Review Insights & Recommendations
Last but not least, the Insights and Recommendations tabs in Google Ads.
I’ve found these tabs to be a huge time-saver to help me identify key changes in performance week-over-week or month-over-month.
We’re all busy. It’s easy to miss high-level insights when we’re so “in the weeds” with our accounts every single day.
The Insights and Reports tab within the “Campaigns” left-hand menu provides insights into an account as a whole or down to the campaign level.
It also drills down to other elements of a campaign, like search term insights or audience insights.
Knowing where to focus my time and effort from these insights saves a lot of time, so I can focus on analyzing the problem and coming up with solutions.
The Recommendations tab is also found on the left-hand menu and provides a wide assortment of recommendations for your account.
This is also where an account’s “Optimization Score” lives, and applying or dismissing recommendations directly impacts that score.
I don’t recommend applying every recommendation that Google suggests just to increase the Optimization Score.
For example, one of the recommendations that would have provided a 9.9% boost in Optimization Score would be to link a Merchant Center account. But this account is not in the ecommerce vertical, so the recommendation makes no sense and wouldn’t be valid.
This tab is useful for account managers to look at the context of an account and easily apply recommendations that make sense.
These are usually broken down into categories:
- Bidding and budgets.
- Keywords and targeting.
- Ads & assets.
- AI Essentials.
- Automated campaigns.
For example, this recommendation suggests removing redundant keywords to more easily manage the account. Especially with match types loosening, applying this recommendation makes sense, and Google automatically does it for me.
That means I can spend more time strategizing and analyzing an account instead of doing the normal “busy work” of having to manually go in and review each keyword to decide what to pause.
Making Google Ads Management Easier
Google Ads has become more complex over the years, and that complexity can make everyday account management slower than it needs to be.
Many of the features above exist specifically to simplify that work. Tools like labels, experiments, shared negative lists, and audience observation help keep accounts organized and easier to analyze.
When those systems are in place, less time goes toward maintenance and more time goes toward improving performance.
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Featured Image: dae sung Hwang/Shutterstock
