Set it and forget it AdWords? Um, no. But Google announced changes today to roll out its AdWords automated rules, in limited release since December, which it says will help make things just a little less manual. Maybe you could even take a day off.

Automated rules let advertisers set up certain actions — pausing ads, enabling ads, raising bids, and the like — in advance, to be triggered by certain events. For example, an ad could get set to go live on a Sunday night, just when the offer it promotes goes into effect. Or the system could automatically check every morning whether it was displaying in the top three positions on the previous day. If not, it could automatically raise the bid price by 10%. In general, automated rules can be used to change status, bid price or budget.

Rules can run once, daily, weekly, or monthly, and each user on an account can have up to 10 rules.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

About The Author: Pamela Parker is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998, including a stint as managing editor of ClickZ. She’s also worked to help monetize independent publishers’ sites at Federated Media Publishing. She blogs about media and marketing at The River and about cooking, gardening and parenthood at Free Range. She can be found on Twitter as @pamelaparker. See more articles by Pamela Parker

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