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Google Says Abusive Bots Have Caused The Keyword Planner Restrictions

After suddenly placing AdWords Keyword Planner restrictions in July, the Google team have explained that abusive bots and misuse of the tool have led to the change.

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To the dismay of digital and inbound marketers everywhere, Google AdWords changed their Keyword Planner data presentation, in July.

The data range has seen a massive increase. Those who are suffering from this are those accounts which don't reach Google's minimum monthly spend required to maintain an unaffected view of the data.

Those account holders see the new, broader average monthly search volumes. Look at the difference in accuracy of monthly searches when you compare my low level access compared to our PPC team's above-threshold figures;

 

restricted data available on adwords to low spending users

FOR LOW SPENDING USERS: The Avg. monthly search figures are given in a wide data range, but suggested bid amount remains unchanged.

 

full data available to adwords high spending users

FOR USERS WHO EXCEED SPENDING THRESHOLD: Those who meet the threshold spend amount still have precise data to work with.

You can see that my access shows somewhere between 10k-100k for "search engine optimisation" per month, but the precise figure is 33,100.

The widest discrepency, however, is in the difference of how the combined monthly search data is presented. For everything related to "search engine optimisation", a low spending user is told there are 100k-1M searches.

That's a pretty wide range, to say the least.

As reported by The SEM Post, Google AdWords explained via Twitter that the change has been put in place to "prevent 'bots' and other services from abusing the intended use of the Keyword Planner."

Here's their responses to Twitter user @matthewgagen;

 

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Like other users, we asked AdWords for some advice for low spending advertisers who now have less specific data, but are yet to receive a response.

 

So Now You Need Other Ways To Get More From Your Marketing Efforts

This might mean you need to look at other ways of making sure your PPC advertising technique is as efficient as possible. Likewise, your wider inbound marketing strategy.

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