AdWords Editor

If you’re managing pay-per-click campaigns, Google’s AdWords Editor is a really handy (but fundamentally limited) free tool provided by Google to help you with certain PPC tasks. It’s a free, desktop-based application, currently in the 9th version of the tool.

AdWords Editor is a free resource provided by Google that can help you with several bulk editing tasks within your AdWords campaigns, such as:

Raising or lowering bids on a number of different keywordsCopying large sections of your campaigns and then tweaking certain areas (moving a list of keywords, a set of ad text, etc.)Changing keyword match types  in massBulk changes of things like URLs where you need to find and replace across multiple areas of your campaignCopying entire campaigns to push to adCenter

What it lacks is mainly “intelligence” – the application isn’t doing a lot of automation or making proactive best practice suggestions (for AdWords this happens within AdWords Automated Rules and the AdWords Opportunities Tab). So while AdWords Editor is helping you to manage certain aspects of your campaigns and push data into Google AdWords, it’s not a campaign management platform in the sense that it’s doesn't make active suggestions around things like bids, keywords, campaign structure, ad copy, etc.

Now that you know what AWE is and isn't helpful for, you can learn to use the tool and likely get a lot of value out of it. Google has their usual combination of helpful (but relatively dry) documentation on the tool here , offering tutorials on subjects such as:

Downloading accounts and statisticsNavigationSearchAdding, editing, and deletingImport and exportChecking for errorsSharing and reviewing changesPosting changesInstallationManaging multiple accountsAdWords Editor settingsUpgrading to a new versionRelease notes