Throttling of Keyword Planner For Low Level Accounts By Google Confirmed

[Tay]

Google officially throttling Keyword Planner data for low spending AdWords accounts
Not a big AdWords spender? You may notice a lack of data in your Keyword Planner account."

Earlier this week, some marketers noticed that Keyword Planner data was displaying ranged data instead of precise search volume. The ranges were wildly broad, with results like “100K–1M” and “1M+.” Some wondered whether this was merely a glitch or if this was a calculated measure that favored higher-spending AdWords advertisers. Today, Google confirmed the latter.

At the end of June, Keyword Planner was acting up, and many users got the message that they needed to have an active AdWords account in order to see the data. This, of course, drew the ire of users everywhere. Last month, a Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land that users do not have to have an active campaign to use Keyword Planner. However, just 13 days later, it now appears that you do need an active campaign for full data and that advertisers cannot have a “lower monthly spend.”
Rusty-Brick

According to Google, “most” advertisers will see Keyword Planner data as usual. But AdWords users with a “lower monthly spend” could see limited data in the planner. How limited? Very. The ranges that Google will provide for those with small (or no) spends makes the tool almost useless. The ranges that will be provided are:

• 0
• 1–100
• 100–1K
• 1K–10K
• 10K–100K
• 100K–1M
• 1M+

Another way that users may experience this ranged data is if they search for search data too often. This appears to be an issue that is specific to requests to the API.

Source: Google officially throttling Keyword Planner data for low spending AdWords accounts
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This change might effect keyword tool that utilize the Google Adwords API and other similar techniques to get search volume.

 

[Ryuzaki]

My account probably has a monthly spend of $0.0001, and I've not seen these changes just yet (was doing research as late as 3am last night). I wonder if some accounts are grandfathered or Adsense earnings play into it.

I am seeing the consolidation of volumes for all related terms instead of individual volumes now though. Which doesn't bother me in the slightest since if you rank for one you rank for them all. As a PPC person I'd be annoyed unless you're forced to bid on these clusters now too.

These broad ranges don't bother me too much either. It's tossing a wrench into the gears of spammers who get their hearts set on ranking for 1 to 5 terms from the outset versus authority sites pumping out content and evaluating traffic as it begins to rank, and either doubling down or pivoting to another set of keywords. In the end, the persistence of authority sites guarantees a win despite seeing data or not.

It's another solid blow to the spammers. They've taken the targets they normally shoot at and made them really blurry and shakey. How big is the target? Where is the center? It's fun to no longer be in the battle and watch others scramble around.

 

[backwoods]

I'm not noticing any changes either (although my Adwords account is quite aged at 12 yrs old)

I plugged in the term "seo" as per the screenshot above just to if there was any variance in metrics. Here is what I see with U.S. and English checked. Interesting differences...

 

[CCarter]

Trying the "search volume" route:

Trying the keyword idea route:

My account is also ancient though. I'm thinking I'm either grandfathered or have not hit the "limit" for constant querying as a $0 account.

 

[ryandiscord]

2 year old account. I spent just over $100 when I created it. I had always kept a campaign active with paused keywords because I thought eventually it would come to this and maybe that would trick the system. Apparently not.

Anybody know what the threshold is to get all the data? I have access to another account that spends $20K a month and that has full data.

 

[MightyOwl]

I am secretly happy that they are indirectly increasing the barrier for entry for proper keyword research. I haven't
seen any problems with my ancient account too . But I mostly use keywordrevealer.com and Serpwoo.com for all my research , and I am pretty sure most people here use some 3rd party tool like that.

 

[turbin3]

I've definitely noticed some odd stuff going on with Keyword Planner and AdWords in general over the past month. My API script started acting up this past month, even though I myself have throttled the querying. Just keeps dropping off randomly and not pulling full data. This is even on an account with a spend of over several hundred grand per month...

On a sidenote, I'm 10 years younger and have gotten 300% cooler since I started using SERPWoo.

 

[CCarter]

Looks like the party's over for users that use only SEO as their only marketing strategy:

"Yesterday, the industry came to a standstill with the complete rollout of range data across all accounts. For those of you that missed it, Google is now returning volume ranges to accounts with low spend - more info here. We had expected this after the initial test a month ago - early on, we found a couple of loopholes which gave us 99% of the data without having spending accounts. As you may be guessing, those loopholes were closed yesterday.

The way the new Keyword Planner works is that for each dollar your account spends, you get a small amount of full-data reports, and after that allocation is exhausted, your account will only retrieve volume ranges. One of the things that exhausted all of our 'full data' reports was one or two users requesting a huge amount of small keyword lists - where we would have been able to retrieve data for 3,000 keywords, we were often using a full-data report to get volume data for just a few keywords.

Things can't go on like this - it has now become very expensive to run an Adwords scraper, and our previous policies are no longer sustainable."

Volume API - Brave New World
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Basically, if you have a live adwords account and are running ADs for your company as an SEO you should be good to go. But if you only do SEO now, volume's gone for you mate. Recall My early screenshot in this thread was from my ancient account, the latest screenshot in this post is from this morning.

One thing to remember is you cannot stop water - a huge body of water at least. With demand when water comes to a wall it either breaks through that wall or charts another course and that's what being in this online game is all about. Several new opportunities will arise as old ones get shutdown by the old guard.

In planning I tend to foresee and think of worse case scenarios. One way around this was to never query Google API at SERPWoo. We got some flank for that, but here we are at the end of the day still running 100% and now those same critics are running back to us asking for increases to their Keyword Finder limits. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Google's done a lot to cull blackhat, SEO, and website owners from data. They've 100% hidden the data in your Google Analytics - which I predicted they would. They are now taken control of your websites and wanting to host them FOR YOU through Google AMP coming to organic results. They've constantly monitored your emails within Gmail and snuffed out blackhatters, PBNs (from customers and sellers that are foolish enough to use the enemy's storage for their communications to undermine the enemy - that logic there is just WOW).

They've changed the way you speak by having you use phrases like "manipulating search results" - give me a fucking break, ALL of SEO is considered that. The problem is when you give an entity more and more power over you, then they have more and more power over you. When Google's CMS comes out - how much do you want to bet a ton of idiots are going to jump on that bandwagon?

The problem is everytime you've jumped on Google's bandwagon you've eventually suffered.

So why do you keep jumping? Look at the push back with HTTPS switch. Google wanted HTTPS, people jumped onboard but then saw there was a drop in rankings and that led to a slowdown in adoption, so they are fighting it on two fronts. First they adjusted 301s to not take that ~25% hit they take. #2 they now are going to be forcing website that do not have https to have warnings come January 1st 2017, through Chrome. Why the fuck did you guys tell every one of your family members to switch to Chrome? Look at how much power you gave them now.

You, the "WEB MASTERS" of the internet gave them all this power. You told your family members and friends to use Google for searches, and they did. You told them to use Gmail, and they followed suit. You told them to use Chrome, and again they followed you blindly. You told your clients to use Google Analytics - and now here we are. Google gained all their power from YOUR recommendations, the "WEB MASTERS" - and then they blindsided you and cut you out of the equation. Google Analytics - now at 100% hidden keyword data. Google search - mostly favoriting big brands. Google Chrome - dictating how the internet websites now operate - otherwise they'll throw up a warning. And then Gmail - you mean Guvrnment-mail.

If you go about it from a Traffic Leak philosophy - you need multiple sources for your survival - YES, it's more work. Yes, it's more difficult. But YES, you'll survive when one avenue is cut off. And as you keep looking at problems and account for potential disasters, and plan ahead, you'll continue surviving longer and longer.

I warned the end was near - but really it's only the end for the weak. Only the strong will survive going forward. It's been like that since the dawn of time.

 

[built]

I think Google has gone too far now imo. but anyway #keywordfinder2.0


@CCarter will this change affect Serpwoo stats?

 

[Ryuzaki]

All the more reason to build authority sites.

As long as terms appear in the Keyword Planner and are grouped together in relevancy, then we can assume they, as a group, have plenty of volume. And the intention is to tackle them all so it doesn't matter in the end.

Of course it doesn't work that way for micro-site spammers. This is another great hurdle for them. Google is doing a good job of baiting and switching everyone in the long-con that runs a decade even. Get dependancy, give a mile, then start giving an inch only in order to remove litter from the internet and thus their index.

This might be writing on the wall. If you work in a single industry, it's probably a good idea to start exporting as much data as you can to hold in some bug-out folder. Access to even keywords and groupings will go bye-bye eventually.

 

[backwoods]

If your account got hit with the limit the Google Keyword Forecasting tool is still an option. When I run PPC campaigns it's actually what I look at.

I agree the micro-spammers are going to hate it and I welcome the changes

 

[CCarter]

@CCarter will this change affect Serpwoo stats?

No, we never queried Google APIs at any level because we felt these things coming.