The change removes visibility into more than 20% of search terms, one agency finds.
This morning, I negated a word that cost a campaign more than $3 for the one click it received in a brand campaign last week. I didn’t add the whole query, just one irrelevant word that triggered a brand keyword. Going forward, I might not ever see that type word or know if it showed up across multiple low-volume queries.
As we reported yesterday, Google has notified advertisers the search terms report will “only include terms that were searched by a significant number of users.” It has given no details about what “significant” means. The company told us the reason for the change is “to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data.”
Unsurprisingly, the move has angered advertisers.
To be clear, maintaining and respecting user privacy should be a priority for tech companies like Google as well as for marketers. Google should keep personally identifiable information (PII) and otherwise sensitive queries that could be tied to someone out of search terms reports and it’s other platforms (the amount of PII that gets passed through to Analytics is a topic for another day). But, Google’s oblique communication about this change has left the door open for skepticism about its motives.
The “not provided” privacy issue is nearly a decade old
Next fall will be the 10th anniversary of “not provided.” Google started limiting visibility into the search terms that drive organic traffic to websites in 2011 for users logged into Google, again citing privacy. The so-called “not provided” issue (how that traffic appears in Analytics reports) has frustrated site owners ever since. For whatever reason — Google’s never been clear about it — the company has continued to surface that data to advertisers in the search terms report.
Is it hypocritical and self-serving to give this data to advertisers and not to others if privacy is behind the decision? It’s hard to deny. Limiting search term data would have undoubtedly hurt Google’s ad business, though advertisers have had a pretty good argument that they’re paying for the clicks and should have access to be able to eliminate wasted ad spend and optimize their campaigns. When “not provided” happened, keyword buying was the only way to buy search ads, and the way keywords matched to search queries was relatively straightforward.
So why make this change to ad search terms now?
We don’t have clear answers on why now. Google’s not saying.
We can either take Google’s statement at face value:
That there was suddenly a privacy epiphany about this data, or that there were enough specific scenarios detected to raise attention, or that this is a reaction to the increase in data privacy regulation and anti-trust scrutiny. We don’t know if there was a specific trigger. GDPR went into effect in 2018. CCPA went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, enforcement started Jul. 1. We know Google had CCPA on its radar because it introduced its solution for advertisers last November (unlike Facebook which waited until July).
Or we can be more skeptical:
Google isn’t providing responses to follow up questions we’ve asked. Regardless of Google’s intentions, there are millions, if not billions, of dollars in ad spend reflected in this longtail data. It’s no wonder advertisers are looking for more answers and clearer communication.
Last quarter, Google’s Search business was hit hard by advertisers pulling back amid the pandemic. The company generated $21.3 billion from Search and other properties such as Maps, a 10% drop year-over-year. (Total revenues were off 8%, marking the company’s first year-over-year decline.) I’d like to think this isn’t a revenue-incentivized decision, and it is certainly reflective of the trend toward automation (more on that later), but it’s nearly impossible not to view this kind of decision, at least in part, though this lens.