Hey, big spender! Spending more on AdWords is now the only way to access complete sets of data in Google’s Keyword Planner tool. Not a big spender? Then prepare for limited access to keyword data going forward.
A Google AdWords Community Manager has announced an update to Keyword Planner which is about to solve and create problems for certain users. The good news is, previous technical issues have been resolved. The news not everyone will be happy with is: low spending AdWords accounts will not have access to as much data as they used to.
“Advertisers with lower monthly spend may see a limited data view in the Keyword Planner.”
The main difference is in the ‘average monthly searches’ column. In a limited data view, the tool will now show ranges of data instead of specific instead of specific values. For example, if a keyword has 500 searches per month, the limited data view will display a range of 100–1K.
Ranges of data will be grouped together as follows:
- 0
- 1–100
- 100–1K
- 1K–10K
- 10K–100K
- 100K–1M
- 1M+
In addition, you might end up triggering the limited data view by reaching a limit on the number of searches for search volume data. However, Google did not specify exactly what that limit is. Presumably this means you can be a big spender and still get your keyword data throttled in Keyword Planner if you conduct too many searches.
Google did not provide any further details on what it considers to be an advertiser with “lower monthly spend”. Apparently, “most” advertisers will continue to see search volume data in Keyword Planner as usual. For what it’s worth, I have not yet run into the limited data view in Keyword Planner and I do not consider myself a big AdWords spender, but your mileage may vary.
