AdWords ‘diagnose keywords’ tool

‘Diagnose keywords’ is a new tool that has started to appear in AdWords accounts of late.

Its purpose is to find all the keywords in a campaign that aren’t displaying ads and give the reasons why. You could still have found this information previously, but it would have meant clicking into specific keywords. This tool puts all the information in one place, making it more easily accessible.

If you perform a scan with the ‘diagnose keywords’ tool, the results will show the keywords for which ads aren’t displaying and next to each keyword it’ll give a reason. It may be a negative keyword you’ve used, low search volume, another ad showing for the same keyword or it may just be that the campaign is currently paused. From these results, you can then click through to each keyword and make changes, if necessary.

This tool gives a good overview of how a campaign is running and is perhaps a quicker way of identifying specific problems that it might be having.

The ‘diagnose keywords’ tool is quite new and is only slowly appearing in people’s AdWords accounts, so keep an eye out for it. It appears next to the ‘opportunities for improvement’ link near the top when you’re in one of your existing campaigns.

Tanasé Rivers
PPC Account Manager