Adwords Editor is a free software by Google to help you manage your campaigns. Basically, how it works is that you enter your Google Adwords account login information, download your campaigns, edit them offline and then upload the changes.

The feature that I use most often (that I feel is missing most in the web version) is the copy-and-paste function. This allows you to quickly duplicate your campaigns, e.g. for different geographic locations, instead of manually entering the keywords, ad text, etc.

If you’d like to give it a spin, now’s a good time because Google has just released a new AdWords Editor version 7.0 that includes the new “first page bids” data and some useful campaign metrics. According to the release notes, some of the major improvements from version 6.5 are:

* First page bid estimates: AdWords Editor now uses first page bid estimates for your keywords. Minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids are no longer used.

* Keyword Quality Score: The Keywords tab now displays the Quality Score for your keywords.

* Keyword Opportunities locale: Tailor your keyword suggestions to a particular language and location by changing your Keyword Opportunities locale.

* Campaign targeting in the data view: You can view your targeting settings in the new Language and Location columns on the Campaigns tab. These columns are hidden by default, but you can select them with the column chooser.

* Send feedback to Google: Help us improve AdWords Editor by enabling usage tracking in your AdWords Editor settings (Tools menu > Settings).

Two other minor changes were noted for the release:

* The use of absolute traffic numbers on the keyword expansion tab (was scaled values).
* Draft accounts no longer have access to the Keyword Opportunities tool.