Pausing Google Ads Keywords starting June 10 due to Low Activity

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 googleadsapi-support@google.com.

 - Mattia Tommasone, Google Ads API Team