Google Adwords Fail – Horrible Support

Today I was working in the offline Google Adwords Editor and noticed what appeared to be a bug in 7.5.2: I could not find a way to open a previously saved search. I've used this feature countless times in previous editions but either (a) I can't remember how to do it, (b) the documentation is wrong, or (c) the developers left out a critical feature by mistake. Just so you know what I'm talking about, here's the Advanced Search screen in the Adwords Editor:

Notice that I've saved a search at the bottom and called it "High imps & low CTR". The problem is there appears to be no way to re-open this saved search later! I was flummoxed and so I went to the Adwords Editor support site and found this:

Your saved search will appear in the View menu under Saved custom views. At any time in the future, you can select this search name to view items in your account that match the criteria you specified. AdWords Editor stores up to eight searches.

Where the hell is the "View menu" in 7.5.2? I couldn't find it. It isn't next to the "other" menus: File, Edit, Account, Data, Tools and Help. So then I started searching Google for various keyword combinations to see if someone had posted about this same problem (they haven't). You know what I learned? If you want to see Google fail at search results, search for Google Adwords Editor saved search. There are probably two results in the over 44,000 results that are helpful and there are many pure spam results.

I spent 15 minutes trying to and, whilst searching in the editor, I saw a link to send feedback:

Fine - will do! So I fired off an email of a "question" type with a subject line of "Where are my saved searches?" and posted a bit about this problem and whether or not I was just not seeing it; basically I was asking how to find my saved searches.

Google Fails So Hard at Customer Service

Within two minutes I received a reply. I suspected it was ye olde "Thanks for writing - we'll get back to you soon!" but I was wrong: Google had answered me! Here was their reply:

Hello,

Thank you for writing in about editing your ad.

You can edit, pause, delete, or resume one ad at a time, or you can change many ads at once. Just be aware that changing the actual ad (such as editing text or uploading a new image) is the same as deleting the original ad and creating a new one, so after editing the ad, its statistics will be reset to zero. The same is true when you move an ad to another ad group.

To change one or more ads, please follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.

2. On your "Campaigns" tab, select the "Ads" tab.

3. Choose one of the options below to edit your ads.

Option 1. Change one ad (inline editing).

To change an ad's status between enabled and paused, click the status icon (such as the green dot or the pause symbol) next to the ad. To editan ad, click the text of your ad or the pencil icon next to the ad. Enter your changes, then click "Save." Whenever you edit and save your ad, it will automatically be resubmitted to us for review.

Option 2: Change multiple ads (bulk editing).

Check the boxes next to the ads you want to update. At the top of the ads table, you'll see a set of buttons and drop-down menus. Use the "Change status" menu to pause, delete, or resume the selected ads. Use the "More actions" menu to perform other tasks, such as copying ads to another ad group.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

What? No, that's not what I asked you. And worse, there is no, "Does this answer your question?" Hell - GoDaddy.com is atrocious but their customer support is miles above Google's.

Anyway, this is just a rant. Booooooooo, Google.

I finally found it

In case you are trying to find where your custom views/saved searches are, the View menu is staring you right in the face:

I feel silly now for not seeing it but, while in the documentation when I read "the View menu", I suspected it would be a menu item next to File, Edit, Account, etc. Doh! I have no excuse for my blindness.