Check that date range

On occasion, the AdWords support team receives emails similar to the one below, which we've paraphrased to shorten it up a bit:

On my Campaign Summary page, the number of clicks and impressions has not accurately been displayed. This has led me to a big charge of $52.39 which I was not aware of. According to my Campaign Summary, I have only accrued $11.23 in clicks... If there is something I'm missing please let me know as soon as possible. - Five days with AdWords

The issue at work here is that many newer advertisers (and even a few old timers) are not aware of the date range for which they're viewing their account statistics.



This date range setting is designed to allow advertisers to quickly view account statistics for a day -- or range of days -- of their choice. This extremely useful setting is found near the top right of your Campaign Management pages and provides the eight pre-set date ranges shown above -- as well as the opportunity to select any individual day, or range of days, since you first created your account.

One important point to mention is that the date range setting is "sticky" -- your selected date range stays where you put it until you modify it again. For example, if you set it to look at your stats for February 14, 2006 (Valentine's Day), that's where it would stay until you actively changed it.

So, be sure to check your date range setting immediatly upon logging into your account. This'll help to avoid unhappy surprises such as the one experienced by 'Five days with AdWords,' whose date range may well have been set to February 14, 2006 when he actually wanted statistics for 'all time.'

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew