• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 18, 2010

A paid search marketer who relies on Google AdWords has initiated a petition on Twitter in an effort to bring back a pay-per click (PPC) tool into the main interface that the Mountain View, Calif. search engine made difficult to find.

Google changed the name and function of a tab in the AdWords user interface, so now it takes a few more clicks to get to the Tools page. The petition asks Google to make it faster and easier to jump to the Tools page. It might seem like a trivial pursuit, but PPC marketers say every click counts, as they try to quickly optimize campaigns.

Amelia Dawson, paid search manager at Leapfrogg Digital Marketing, initiated the petition after speaking with fellow PPC marketers who also "hate" the idea that Google moved the Tools menu -- calling it a major inconvenience. "After the new interface launched, I hoped the 'Opportunities' tab in AdWords would become a temporary addition, but the Tools tab never came back," she explains.

Dawson calls the extra steps a waste of time because PPC marketers rely heavily on the tools and visit the page often. Google needs to reinstate the Tools tab to remain in the main user interface in order to keep AdWords intuitive, which in turn makes it easy to optimize campaigns.

Having to dig for the tools menu means new advertisers will become far less likely to produce and run successful campaigns, because the correct tools are not directly at their fingertips, Dawson says. "Many of my colleagues in the industry also feel the Opportunities tab is a sales tool for Google to add more keywords, so the campaigns spend more money," she says.

Unfortunately for Dawson, the petition, initiated in Twitition, has not had the same success as other petitions on Twitter. Few have given the AdWords Twitition a thumbs-up. It will take much more than a dozen or so signatures for the petition to force Google into changing the application.

Twitition, which allows people to create and sign petitions using Twitter, has had some success. The tool emerged in June 2009, "just for fun," developed by Branded3, a U.K.-based marketing firm.

Patrick Altoft, director of search at Branded3, says Twitition has had nearly 1 million visitors in the last six months, and more than 90,000 people follow the Twitter account. It has helped gather more than 260,000 signatures on nearly 9,000 petitions.

Altoft claims that one Twitition petition became instrumental in forcing AT&T to change the iPhone upgrade policy, and another forced Google to update their satellite imagery for the Iran election protests. "Big brands take notice when people complain on Twitter," he says. "With a Twitition, the outcry just doesn't seem to die down until the brand takes action."