Google Limits Search Terms Reporting

Earlier this month, Google announced a new policy change to limit Search Terms reporting. This shift is aimed at increasing user privacy, but the response from practitioners in the SEM world has been swift citing concern over losing visibility into advertiser spend.

While Google has shared limited information so far, here’s what was released in a recent statement: 

In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions.”

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While this change will bring more freedom to Google’s Smart Bidding algorithms to enhance performance and take steps to protect user privacy, this change will prevent advertisers to see exactly where their Paid Search spend is going. Advertisers won’t be able to see all searches that trigger their Paid Search Ads, rather they’ll only be able to monitor searches made by a significant (as defined by Google) number of people.

There is no opt-out option at this time, but we’re working closely to monitor the situation with our Google Premier Partner Reps to better understand the changes and proactively ensure limited client impact.

If you have any questions or concerns about your paid search campaigns in the meantime, please contact us.