Search Agencies and Advertisers relied on the feature to synchronize their search campaigns.
Oversight Until Now?
Steve and others are convinced that Google conscientiously removed the feature to stifle their competition. “I used to convert my 30,000 Google AdWords ads into Yahoo ads. But not anymore!”
But was it intentional? An why was it only changed now if the practice has existed for some time. Google hasn’t publicly announced the minor change and I’ve asked them for clarification on the basis of the change.
Google Upsetting Their Users
I would be moderately surprised if the change was directed at Yahoo since it affects users. Besides the Yahoo ad integration; the export is also used by 3rd party analysis tools and custom reporting. While the change might be a good business decision for AdWords, it does go against the Google’s stature of ethics. The export was simply allowing access to your own data. As Steve pointed out, “It's a move that will likely affect the larger advertisers, making it difficult to synchronize settings across the two search engines”.
In the past, Google has been extremely open with it’s users and clients.
The search engine opened the doors last year by giving away #1 Google search result for free to the social community of Google users. The integration of Google Base with AdWords has allowed RelevantYellow to extend even more local business data more content to AdWords and search.
Mission Control
Google mission is to collect and organize the Worlds information. Their algorithm specializes in delivering the right, relevant information.
Is this an early sign that Google will take ownership of your data?
2 comments:
After two days, at 1:28AM PST this morning, Google did reply. It's a dry a probably a canned (pre-prepared) response for the bulksheet issue. Here it is:
Hello David,
Thank you for your email. I understand you would like to know why the bulksheets feature is no longer available. Below, I have answered your question.
After much consideration, we've decided to phase out bulksheets in favor of AdWords Editor, our downloadable campaign management application. We currently plan to stop supporting bulksheets early in 2007. Here are a few reasons for this change:
- Bulksheets will become more and more obsolete as we continue to introduce new AdWords features. In contrast, AdWords Editor has the scalability necessary to grow with AdWords and with your account.
- AdWords Editor is a more robust and user-friendly campaign editing tool that doesn't require the hassle of formatting and correcting bulksheets.
- AdWords Editor reduces the time you wait for changes by enabling you to
make bulk changes on your own.
We're aware that this change may disrupt your normal campaign management workflow, so we're dedicated to making the transition as smooth as possible for you. Here are a few key resources to help you get acquainted with all the features and benefits of AdWords Editor:
- An introduction to AdWords Editor:
http://www.google.com/support/adwordseditor/bin/static.py?page=about.html
- Features of the application:
http://services.google.com/adwordseditor/features.html
- Exhaustive AdWords Editor Help Center:
http://www.google.com/support/adwordseditor
We're confident that the transition to AdWords Editor will be beneficial to you, and we look forward to assisting you in the process. Please let me know if you have any questions.
If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at https://adwords.google.com/support to find answers to many frequently asked questions. Or, try our Learning Center at http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ for self-paced lessons that cover the scope of AdWords.
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Sincerely,
Obair
The Google AdWords Team
They have a good point on the compatibility concerns as the go forward; however I sincerely think that they could figure it out. There's no mention about the Yahoo compatibility or response to my remark about blocking their competition, but then again, considering this came in at 1:28AM on a Monday, this is probably some poor chap in India who just hit the "REPLY BULKSHEET DISCONTINUE" button.
As a website develop who creates content (publishing, journalism etc), I can't say I get too worried that one major corporation is going to monopoise the world, or the world's information. My experience has been that users are becoming more and more sophisticated - and cycnical - in the way they view information. A Google conspiracy would only lead to its decline.
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