In this article, I share five quick diagnostic tests that will let you go past your default views in Google AdWords and gain some quick insights into your campaigns that could save even the savviest AdWords advertisers thousands of dollars a month... all in less than an hour!

Check 1: Device Segmentation

First, look at a relatively new and oft-underutilized reporting option: segmenting the traffic for each of your campaigns by device. Doing so can frequently lower your costs on the content network in particular, but it can affect search as well:

Your mobile visitors may be experiencing your site differently, and you may see poor performance from that traffic. If so, you can split the mobile traffic into its own campaign or create a better experience for your mobile visitors. Or, if your site doesn't work for mobile, then don't target mobile visitors at all.

Check 2: Day-of-Week/Hour-of-Day Segmentation

Once again, from the segment reporting drop-down menu, you can break out day-of-week or hour metrics to help you identify which day of the week or hour of the day is performing particularly poorly and costing you money. You can access that information in two spots:

• Campaigns > Segments > View the data by campaign, by day of week (or hour of day)
  
• Dimensions > Time > Day of Week (or hour) > Customize Columns to look at Campaigns > View the data by campaign, by day of week

Whichever way you get to the data, that check is a quick way to find an outlier that's underperforming. You can then use date-segmentation settings in your campaigns to not target the times you find are underperforming, such as the weekend, for example.

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