From June 10, 2024, Google will start to automatically pause Google Ads keywords that haven't had any impressions in the last 13 months. The rollout is expected to be complete for all production Google Ads accounts by August 2024. This change aims to enhance the Google Ads experience for advertisers, similar to the changes made earlier for ad groups with low activity.
Advertisers can unpause keywords if needed, or remove them if not. It's recommended that advertisers review their keywords and only unpause those expected to get impressions in the coming weeks.
No code changes are necessary, but Google Ads API developers can make changes to improve transparency for advertisers about why the ad_group_criterion.status is set to PAUSED. If local copies of Google Ads information are kept in a database, they can be synchronized by querying change history.
The change event resource can be queried to see if the keyword status has changed. If the change_event.changed_fields contains status, then this is a keyword that Google paused. The query should replace INSERT_YYYY-MM-DD with the appropriate date range.
Starting with v17, the ad_group_criterion.primary_status field can be retrieved to see if keywords have been paused. Keywords with this field set to PAUSED and ad_group_criterion.primary_status_reasons containing AD_GROUP_CRITERION_PAUSED_DUE_TO_LOW_ACTIVITY are those automatically paused due to low activity. The change history query can be adjusted to include these fields.
Keywords can still be updated and changes made while they are in a paused state. For any questions, support can be reached via the support form or at googleadsapi-support@google.com.
Summary by Mattia Tommasone, Google Ads API Team
