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For those of us that have been using Google Adwords for more than 10 years, you have seen the progression of updates to the Google Adwords Interface. Now, in the early years of Google Adwords, they always had the Google Adwords Editor that helped us make large-scale changes in a lesser amount of time, which was great when it comes to thousands of keywords or ads that need changing. So, what we have seen Google do is make a few of the Google Adwords Editor functions available within the Google Adwords interface. The changes were not that drastic, because there was not a whole lot that changed as far as the layout of the interface itself; so, we just kept plugging away within the interface while having a few more extra tools at our disposal. But recently, Google has made some huge changes to Google Adwords, including changing the name of “Google Adwords” itself. Google Adwords is now referred to as “Google Ads”, and Google has totally done away with the “Google Adwords” name altogether. And even more, the biggest change of them all is that Google has totally redesigned the Interface from the old one that has been in place for years upon years. This has caused a huge uproar with many of the more veteran Google Adwords users that I have talked to personally or have had the opportunity to view blog or article posts about it. So, with this write up, I will be discussing the differences and opinions of the Old Google Adwords Interface vs New Google Ads Interface.
Google Adwords Is Now Google Ads
You would think that with just a simple name change that things would not be that much different with the advertising platform formerly known as Google Adwords. But recently, the name change is only the beginning of what has changed with the advertising platform. From a simple function such as sorting through columns or even just adding columns, there is a big difference in the Google Ads platform vs the Google Adwords traditional platform. Google did not give us a huge amount of warning either when it came to the name change. I first got a notice about it maybe a month ago when Google sent their Google Partners emails to let them know what changes were coming. Then they sent the same type of email stating their name change to everyone who had a Google Adwords account (which includes all of our clients). This caused a little bit of a stir as our clients called or emailed asking if Google Adwords was going away and what they were going to do now. So, thanks again to Google for the very short notice when it came to the change of the name from Google Adwords to Google Ads, (not really!).
Old Google Adwords Experience vs New Google Ads Experience
The one that Google did give us access to is the older interface. We are able to toggle to the older interface within the account by the Tool icon, and then choose “view in previous experience”. So, it is not that Google does not know just how difficult the new interface is; they have person after person calling the customer support lines and complaining or asking “what happened to the old interface?” We have spoken to quite a few Google support reps lately that have mentioned that they themselves are not fond of the new Google Ads interface. They say that they have been having an overwhelming amount of complaint calls, and in very rare cases have some commenting positively on the new interface. With the toggle still being available for us users currently, Google is planning on making it unavailable for us to toggle to the old interface/experience in the coming months. To add to that, for any brand new accounts that have been created, there is no “previous experience” option available to the user. New accounts are literally stuck with the new Google Ads interface and have no other option for anything else.
Is Google Making The New Interface More Difficult On Purpose?
It is almost as if Google has tried so hard to make the new experience/interface difficult to operate so that the user must set many of the settings to “auto” so that Google can control the whole account themselves. I mean, seriously though, when you really think about it, it makes perfect sense as to why they have created more and more tools and functions that offer some sort of “auto” feature. Even when you think about it this way, many of Google Ads’ default settings are set to some sort of “auto” setting when you create a brand new campaign. They have literally come out with 10 more auto features within the Google Ads interface, and even have a brand new “auto feed” function coming to the Google merchant center to get shopping feeds up and running and spending money. After all, Google is a business and a smart business at that. They know that they are the biggest name in online and search engine marketing when it comes to the side of paid advertising. They also know that no matter how upset they make people who use and utilize their services, they are not going to just up and leave Google’s powerhouse exposure services and use another platform and get the same type of traffic and volume. I mean, who really is the next giant, big name search engine marketing platform that has a comparable paid advertising platform? Is it Bing? Is it Yahoo? Is it even any of the other smaller search engines that are probably in the Google Search partners anyway? Well, we all know the answer to that question. I am pretty sure we can all agree that there is not another major competitor to Google at this point in the game with all of those years of providing a search engine that has literally become a household name. So, with Google knowing that they almost have full capability to move their platform in the direction of a fully automatic system that helps users get exactly what they think they are going to get, which is sales or conversions. The difference is that Google wants your money, and they are surely going to get it either way. But, with the new interface driving things into the “auto” function realm, they know that they are in full control of how fast they get your money and how often they get your money; while making it sound like they are giving you what you want in return – which is traffic. It is definitely something to think about with all of these recent changes that have not been on the side of the consumer and past users of the Google Adwords platform. If it was not so drastic of a change, these questions may have very well never had arisen.
