Anyone who has used the Google AdWords interface will know it's a little tricky to get used to.

It's all web based, so there's lots of time spent logging in, loading screens, submitting data, and running reports.

While AdWords provide you the raw information, the way that they allow you to interact and manipulate this data falls short of most people's requirements. We all want to run graphs and track things over time, not to mention easier ways to change, update, add and delete campaigns, ad groups and individual ads.

Chris Lee and Goran Nagy have stepped up to the mark and produced a piece of software called AdWords Dominator that says “Let me show you a better way to do this!” Using the free Google AdWords API, they've created a piece of software that runs from your desktop interfacing with Google to interact directly with your AdWords account.

So you no longer need to log into your account manually and use their web based system. Using this piece of software, you can do it all from the comfort of your own desktop.

Like other products this team has put out, the interface for AdWords Dominator is super slick, created in a professional and user friendly way. I wish all software creators were so considerate!

Thankfully, AdWords Dominator is definitely not one of these annoying products. It looks as good and functions as well as pretty much any piece of software on the market. This really is a fantastic effort given that the development team is basically just two guys.

I was lucky enough to be invited by Chris and Goran to help them with their beta program. This meant I (and other big time AdWords users) got to test the software during the development phase and could throw suggestions their way about how we thought they could improve the software. The really cool thing is that most of the things we suggested actually got included!

Let me show you inside the software and how it all ended up.

My Experience

To understand AdWords Dominator, it's important to get your head around how the software interacts with your AdWords account.

Basically you install this piece of software (and another supporting database system) on your machine. Then when you first start the software you enter your Google API key (which is free) as well as your Google AdWords username and password. This allows the AdWords Dominator to talk directly with your account.

The set-up wizard then walks you through the process of synchronizing the data stored at Google with your local software so AdWords Dominator can interact with it. It was a pretty easy process, and took only a matter of minutes to complete.

Once synchronized, you can work with all your AdWords data on your local machine. Thankfully this means that everything works as fast as lightning and you can interact with your whole AdWords account pretty much instantly. No more clicking and waiting like with the normal AdWords method.

When you've made all the updates you require, you simply synchronize back to your AdWords account at Google using the upload button on the toolbar. It updates only the things you have changed, so that in itself is also almost instantaneous.

When you view the main interface, you will notice that it is broken up into 4 main sections. Within each of these sections you can manage different elements of your AdWords account. From campaigns, to keywords, to ads, to reporting, you can mess around with the lot.

Campaign Management Section

As you'd know, using the web based management tool that AdWords provides you to add new campaigns is a fairly annoying process. First you have to add the campaign, then you add multiple ad groups within that campaign. Sounds easy, but it's quite slow when you have actually do it using the interface provided by Google due to screens loading, and the multi-step format they make you do.

With AdWords Dominator it seriously couldn’t be any easier. One screen for the campaign. One screen for the Ad Group. It is so simple, when you go back and do it the old way, you wonder why on earth Google didn't ask Chris and Goran how it should be done in the first place.

Keyword Management Section

The keyword management section of AdWords Dominator is also so easy it isn’t funny. Thankfully, they don’t try and integrate a keyword research tool into the system. To expect them to put a keyword research tool in would be like expecting Macromedia Dreamweaver to do image editing as well. It's something that should be done with a specialized tool, not an add-on to an exisiting tool.

AdWords Dominator allows you to add the keywords you have found from your research into the system by cutting and pasting them in, or by importing a text file. You can add, change, or delete any keyword for any campaign using the box below.

For every single keyword in your campaign you can also very quickly and easily get some interesting data. This data includes impressions, clicks, click through rate, average position, average cost per click, total cost for the period, as well as the conversion rate.

Essential stuff to see how each keyword is performing. Based on this information you can make adjustments accordingly to improve the click through rate for the ad group.

Ad Management Section

Once again AdWords Dominator provides you a quick and easy method to add, remove, and modify ads. As AdWords advertisers, one of our biggest concerns is finding ways to tweak our ads so that they get the highest click through rate. This software gives us a simple way to help facilitate this process.

For each and every ad you create, you can drill down into detailed information and charting about how that ad has performed over time.

Reporting and Charting Section

The reporting section is the real nuts and bolts of the software. While the other sections of the software help with the management of your campaigns, this part deals with the intelligence of it all.

Within this reporting section you can use the tabs to see multiple screens. This is a nice way of allowing you to view your data in a variety of ways, depending upon what you are looking for. Each section gives you intelligence about the impressions, clicks, CTR, position, cost, CPC, as well as a special measure called AEI (AdWords Efficiency Indicator) which is AdWords Dominator's special indicator that shows the efficiency of your data over time.

For example, of you take a look at this graph it produces, you can see the green line has had a steady curve downwards showing that I have been slowly refining my ads so they get a better click through rate (and end up costing me less). This is the holy grail of AdWords.

You can even drill down to see what happened with your account on specific dates using the data tab, as well as see a summary of how each of your specific keywords are performing so you can drop out the keywords that are low performing and negatively impacting the ad groups performance and consequently pushing up the prices you have to pay.

Negatives?

You might be saying “Hey Jay, you are raving on about how good this thing is, are there any bad points?” Well I have to say, this software is pretty darn cool and it is hard to pick fault with it. Probably my only little gripe was an aspect of the synchronization that you do when you are grabbing the latest data from AdWords. The software asks you to remember how many days ago you downloaded your last report so it knows how much data to grab.

Now it doesn’t matter that much as it doesn’t create duplicate entries but I would love for the system to be able to detect the last update I did, and then give me an option to download the data from my last update. Perhaps there is an underlying reason why you can’t do it in this manner, but it makes sense to me to do it that way.

The other thing you might like to check out is to see if this software complies with the terms of service of the Google API.

Want to see a quick video on how this system works? Click here.

Summary

This software really is ground breaking, and it is so refreshing to use some software in the Internet marketing field that hits the mark in its first version. Much of the software we see is rushed out and underdone. This is certainly not the case with AdWords Dominator.

The more I use AdWords Dominator, the more a realize that this is going to become a permanent part of my daily software arsenal. It isn't one of those products that you get caught up in the hype of only to realize down the track it really isn't that useful in the real world.

It really does change the way I deal with my AdWords advertising. I see no reason why I would ever need to login to my AdWords account in the old way again. Unless someone comes out with something better, I am sticking with AdWords Dominator for good. I highly recommend this product for any regular AdWords user.

Strong Aspects

• Excellent interface
• Easy manipulation of your AdWords campaigns
• Advanced reporting and charting
• Inexpensive
  

Weak Aspects

• Requires the use of Google AdWords API Key (check TOS)

Rating

 (5 out of 5)

Site: Check Out Adwords Dominator Now!