Starting June 10, 2024, we are rolling out a permanent change that automatically pauses Google Ads keywords that haven’t had any impressions during the last 13 months. The rollout is expected to be complete for all production Google Ads accounts in August 2024. We’re implementing this change to improve Google Ads experience for advertisers, in a similar way to what we changed earlier this year for ad groups with low activity.

You can unpause keywords if you still need them, or to remove them if you don’t. However, we recommend that all advertisers review their keywords, and only unpause the ones they expect to get impressions in the coming weeks.

What do I need to change?

No code changes are necessary, but Google Ads API developers can make changes to improve the transparency to their advertisers as to why the ad_group_criterion.status is set to PAUSED. If you keep local copies of Google Ads information in your database, you can keep them in sync by querying change history.

You can query the change event resource to see if the keyword status has changed with the following query for all API versions. If the change_event.changed_fields contains status, then this is a keyword that Google paused. Make sure to replace INSERT_YYYY-MM-DD with your own date range.

SELECT
change_event.new_resource,
change_event.old_resource,
change_event.changed_fields,
change_event.resource_name,
change_event.change_resource_name,
change_event.user_email
FROM change_event
WHERE
change_event.change_resource_type = 'AD_GROUP_CRITERION'
AND change_event.user_email = 'Low activity system bulk change'
AND change_event.resource_change_operation = 'UPDATE'
AND change_event.change_date_time BETWEEN ' INSERT_YYYY-MM-DD' AND ' INSERT_YYYY-MM-DD'
ORDER BY change_event.change_date_time DESC
LIMIT 50

An example of a change event where the keyword has been paused by Google would look similar to:

{
      "changeEvent": {
        "resourceName": "customers/1234567890/changeEvents/1708648783892610~5~0",
        "changeDateTime": "2024-02-22 16:39:43.89261",
        "changeResourceName": "customers/1234567890/adGroupCriteria/1234567890~0987654321",
        "changeResourceType": "AD_GROUP_CRITERION",
        "userEmail": "Low activity system bulk change",
        "oldResource": {
          "adGroupCriterion": {
            "status": "ENABLED"
          }
        },
        "newResource": {
          "adGroupCriterion": {
            "status": "PAUSED"
          }
        },
        "changedFields": "status",
        "resourceChangeOperation": "UPDATE",
      }
    }

You can use the resource names returned by this query to retrieve the current status of the keywords and mutate if, if needed.

Starting with v17, you can also retrieve the ad_group_criterion.primary_status field to see if your keywords have been paused; keywords that have this field set to PAUSED and for which the ad_group_criterion.primary_status_reasons contains AD_GROUP_CRITERION_PAUSED_DUE_TO_LOW_ACTIVITY are the ones that were automatically paused due to low activity. You can adjust the change history query to include these fields.

You will still be able to update your keywords and make changes while they are in a paused state.

Where can I get support?

If you have questions, please reach out to us on the support form or at [email protected].

 - Mattia Tommasone, Google Ads API Team

What's changing?

We are updating the Google Ads API resource usage policy to throttle GoogleAdsService.Search and GoogleAdsService.SearchStream query patterns that consume excessive amounts of API resources. If a particular query pattern is throttled, other services, methods, and query patterns will continue to work unaffected.

Starting the week of June 17, 2024, and only for the throttled query patterns, requests will be affected as follows:

• If you use version v16 or older of the API, you will receive a QuotaError.RESOURCE_TEMPORARILY_EXHAUSTED error.
• If you use version v17 or later of the API, you will receive a QuotaError.EXCESSIVE_SHORT_TERM_QUERY_RESOURCE_CONSUMPTION or QuotaError.EXCESSIVE_LONG_TERM_QUERY_RESOURCE_CONSUMPTION, depending on whether the excessive resource consumption was for a short period of time (a few minutes), or a long period of time.

To help you identify and monitor your expensive reports, we will also return a cost metric for individual reports. To view the cost for successful reports, see the following fields:

• SearchGoogleAdsResponse.query_resource_consumption field when running reports using GoogleAdsService.Search method.
• SearchGoogleAdsStreamResponse.query_resource_consumption field when running reports using the GoogleAdsService.SearchStream method.

Why this change?

We are making this change to preserve the reliability and stability of the API.

What do I need to do?

Before June 17, 2024, update your applications to do the following:

• Handle the new error codes when making GoogleAdsService::Search or GoogleAdsService::SearchStream calls
  • If you use version v16 or earlier of the Google Ads API, then handle QuotaError.RESOURCE_TEMPORARILY_EXHAUSTED errors.
  • If you use version v17 or later of the API, handle the QuotaError.EXCESSIVE_SHORT_TERM_QUERY_RESOURCE_CONSUMPTION and QuotaError.EXCESSIVE_LONG_TERM_QUERY_RESOURCE_CONSUMPTION errors.
  • If one or more of your reporting query patterns are throttled, you should review and fix the query pattern. Here are some ways to improve query performance:
  • Run the query less frequently.
  • Use a less expensive query pattern or view.

To learn more about optimizing your queries, see manage data efficiency.

• [Optional] Incorporate the new query_resource_consumption metric into your monitoring systems to detect and handle new expensive queries.

How to get help

If you have any questions about this change or need help optimizing specific query patterns, check out the Google Ads API support page for options.

- David Stevens, Google Ads API Product Manager