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Google Makes Ad Preview Tool Easier To Use

The Inside AdWords blog announced that they have improved the Google AdWords Preview Tool.

Google launched the preview tool in September 2006. Back then, you had to manually add location attributes and values to the URL of the preview tool to see ads within that location. Now Google is offering several different drop down menus to aid you in previewing your ad in the location you desire.


In addition, if you want to forward the results of the ad preview tool to a client or someone else, you can no longer simple copy the URL at the top.

Google should probably add a “link to this page” feature, like they have on Google Maps. But if you want to send people that URL, you can still do so. In Firefox, select the criteria of the ad preview. Then right click in the bottom frame and select “This Frame” and then “Open Frame in New Tab” and there you can copy the URL to that specific page.

By the way, See Google Results From Any Country With Firefox Extension covers a tool that does some of what the preview tool does, directly from within Firefox.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.