The filter function in AdWords is pretty powerful. Definitely should be one of the first steps in discovering opportunities and diagnosing problems. Here are a few of my favorites:

This one helps identify low hanging fruit. These keywords have great quality score, low CPA but just need a little increase in bid to get to a higher position so they can make more of an impact.

CPA is high, conversion rate is low and average position is also high. The bid unnecessarily high for these keywords. They’re not doing much for you so you might as well pay less for them.

These keywords are the bottom feeders. Really expensive and nothing to show for it.

Lots of clicks, high CTR and low conversion rate generally means that the ad does a good job of being relevant with the keyword but there is a disconnect when it comes to the landing page. Test different landing pages with these ones.

Lots of impressions and no clicks means these keywords are going to kill your quality score over time. Try different adtext.

Lots of clicks with a low quality score means these keywords are really expensive. Is it worth it?

Landing pages are underestimated in the role they play in paid search. I think the reason is because it’s a lot easier to tweak adtext, bids and keywords than the landing page. For the query “front load stacked washer and dryer” this is the ad and landing page Sears gives me:

Can you imagine walking into a sears and telling the rep that you are looking for a front loading stacked washer and dryer and in response he says, “sure, all washers and dryers are in the back, go ahead and find it yourself.” Yet that is what this landing page is telling me – “here’s everything we sell related to washers and dryers, figure it out.”

You can discover where your ads are writing checks that your landing page can’t cash in Google Analytics. Pull up your keyword report under Advertising > AdWords and add the secondary dimension of Destination URL (or make a custom report like mine below). Sort by bounce rate and here you will see all the keywords that aren’t matching very well with their chosen landing pages.

In my example below, line 2 has spent $335 and has a bounce rate of 90% and -40% ROI – ouch. Time to rethink the quality of this keyword and the quality of this landing page.