Why do you need AdWords scripts?

AdWords scripts provide you a great way to automate tasks related to your AdWords accounts. They are great for any repetitive account management tasks. We use over 100 scripts every day for reporting, bid changes, detailed analysis, suggestions. If you have never used scripts you will wonder how you survived without them once you do start using them.

You do need some basic knowledge of JavaScript, but the best thing about the AdWords scripts development environment is that it provides you a lot of help to program easily

Log in to your AdWords account and click on the campaigns tab.

The side bar will have a “Bulk operations” menu, which contains “Scripts”. Clicking on it will open a new panel. Then click on “+Scripts” to open the scripts editor, where you can create your script.

Here’s what you should know

Uou will need to know basics of JavaScript before you can get started. Some of the things that you should be familiar with are variables, strings, objects, parameters, functions, and methods. AdWords provides several built-in objects for your use. It will also be useful for you to go through the resources made available by Google. The AdWords API documentation also provides essential information.

The below example, which is provided by AdWords shows an example script

Your first script

Once you finish writing your script, you should click on the “authorize” button. This will let the script to make changes to your AdWords account. You can also authorize your script before you start writing it. After authorization, you should preview the script to ensure that it works properly before you run it. You can also schedule your scripts to be run either once or repeatedly at a frequency of your choice.

Test some scripts

Here are some free scripts for you to get started.

404 Page Checker
Check no ads are going to dead pages with this landing page checker

Trend Overview
Get an overview of performance over the last 12 months or more to spot long term trends

Zero Clicks Alert
Get e-mail if no clicks on your account yesterday in case you miss notification from adwords

Snapshot summary
Get an e-mail first thing in the morning with key data for yesterday and how it compares to average for the last 2 weeks