There is one very good use for the desktop editor as it relates to negative keywords . . . when I setup a new account in an industry which we already know, I often use the desktop editor to download negatives to excel, maybe do a scrub job for any geo differences, and then upload the list via copy and paste into the online Adwords editor.

You can copy paste from the online editor as well, but Google doesn’t make it easy to do so. It’s much cleaner from the desktop editor.

1) Too often, monkeying around with negatives in the desktop editor results in keywords being posted at the ad group level. Make sure you have a blasted good reason for posting negatives at the ad group level. I’m not saying never post them at the ad group level, just make sure you have a logical reason for doing so.

2) Somehow, for many of our PPC Managers (SR), when they add 3 negatives to a list of 801 negative keywords, the result in the change history is delete 801 negatives and add 804 negatives. When such a person (SR) does this 42 times in one account over a two week period, then the change history becomes incredibly difficult to decipher. So especially if your initials are SR, just don’t use the desktop editor for managing negative keywords.