Yesterday, Google mumbled what seemed like a little insignificant announcement on their Inside Adwords blog.

It was a casual notice to say they’ve updated one of their Adwords reports.

But don’t be fooled by their low-key approach — this is big. If you’re an Adwords advertiser, this will save you a ton of time and effort.

The report the Google boffins have tweaked is the Search Query Performance report. Before they lifted the veil yesterday, this report would tell you some of the actual queries people searched for before they clicked on your ad.

For example, if you were bidding on the phrase match keyword “blue widgets”, the report might show you some of the variations people used to see – and click on – your ad.

Like “free blue widgets” or “how to make money with blue widgets”, “blue widgets complaint” — you get the idea.

You could add negative keywords – or even create new adgroups – based on what the report said.

Anyway, notice that I said some of the queries. Not all.

And that was the problem…

Anywhere between 30%-70% of the real juicy keywords the searcher used were hidden as “other unique queries”.

That meant that you had to either hunt through mountains of server logs, or hack the hell out of Google Analytics to track the precise searches that lead to sales.

It was doable, but far from easy.

But yesterday all that changed: the benevolent Google Gods smiled upon us and changed everything.

The Search Query Performance report now shows you all the queries – just as if you were looking through the server logs.

What’s more, if you’re tracking conversions (if not, you bloody well should be) you can see every search query that lead to an opt-in, enquiry, or sale.

This is powerful stuff and not to be underestimated.

So raise you coffee mugs in salute to the Adwords guys… (They’ve done something us marketers like for a change.)

“Well done Google!”

Speak soon,

~George

PS: If I get a spare hour or two, I’ll show you how I use this report, excel and Adwords Editor to boost CTR and conversions while cutting spend – with just 20-30 minutes work per week. It’s pretty cool.

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