Retrieving Deleted Keywords

[dshevnock]

Since an Account Structure report will not return Deleted keywords,
what is my next best option to retrieve what Keywords have been
deleted?

=========== Here is our actual scenario that begs the previous
question ===========
We had an interesting situation happen to us this morning which I need
to rectify. Yesterday we deleted 384 keywords across 6 accounts. Every
morning, one of the very first things we do is to do a complete
account synchronization to see if the statuses of any Campaigns,
AdGroups, or Keywords have changed since the last account sync. In my
haste, I naturally assumed that these keywords we deleted, would have
their status updated to 'Deleted' this morning during a typical
account sync. However, to my suprise, they were not updated.

So when our application went to update new bids at the Keyword level
for each of these 6 accounts, we had about 45,000 bid updates fail
since our end thought those keywords were still active, but in
reality, they were non-existent on Google's end.

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hello Dan,

After poking around a bit with reports and getAllCriteria(), I don't
actually know of a good method to retrieve a list of deleted keywords
using the API. I can tell you that there is an existing feature
request in with the reports team to return deleted keywords in
Structure reports, though, which is kind of the natural place for
them.

Sorry,
-Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team

[dshevnock]

I kind of through the getAllCriteria() request was the only way. The
only problem with that is the amount of expended for that and we have
about 10,500 adgroups.

Is a keyword status being set to deleted the ONLY reason why a keyword
wouldn't show up in an Account Structure report? Or are there other
reasons?

On Jun 12, 11:56 am, AdWords API Advisor

[timprepscius]

Don't use a structure report, use a keyword report. The structure
report is a red-herring. Too many problems.

Request no statistics except for impressions to force zero impressions
keywords.
And walah cross-client works too. Be careful though, large reports
cause errors without notice.

Also, google has some sort of scheduling problem so your reports may
take forever to process. Restarting the report seems to work. Who
hasn't missed by a dollar.

Now if only someone from google would tell me where the missing clicks
are going. Cause they're not going to the "re-imbursed" or the
"invalid" stack.. Cause none of them _seem_ to add up..

Something I would _really_ like to know, is, internally-in-google, do
people know where each and every click goes and you just don't tell
us.. Or is it a mystery for everybody there too, except for maybe 20
super-inside people or so.

For instance, on 2008-05-31 I requested a statistics report for a
certain company

>qgrep -L -e "1904811284" 1.Statistics.Creative.2008-05-30.2008-05-30.xml.frombefore.linebreak
<row date="2008-05-30" customerid="1215503286" campaignid="29657924"
adgroupid="1013695484" keywordid="372080489" creativeid="1904811284"
imps="402" clicks="21" cost="2180000" pos="3.3855721393" conv="0"
convValue="0.0" leads="0"></row>
<row date="2008-05-30" customerid="1215503286" campaignid="29657924"
adgroupid="1013695484" keywordid="372081509" creativeid="1904811284"
imps="10" clicks="0" cost="0" pos="1.4" conv="0" convValue="0.0"
leads="0"></row>
<row date="2008-05-30" customerid="1215503286" campaignid="29657924"
adgroupid="1013695484" keywordid="532512868" creativeid="1904811284"
imps="76" clicks="38" cost="2480000" pos="1.3026315789" conv="0"
convValue="0.0" leads="0"></row>


And then just a little while ago I requested the same statistics
report:

>qgrep -L -e "1904811284" 1.Statistics.Creative.2008-05-30.2008-05-30.xml.linebreak
<row date="2008-05-30" customerid="1215503286" campaignid="29657924"
adgroupid="1013695484" keywordid="372080489" creativeid="1904811284"
imps="402" clicks="21" cost="2180000" pos="3.3855721393" conv="0"
convValue="0.0" leads="0"></row>
<row date="2008-05-30" customerid="1215503286" campaignid="29657924"
adgroupid="1013695484" keywordid="372081509" creativeid="1904811284"
imps="10" clicks="0" cost="0" pos="1.4" conv="0" convValue="0.0"
leads="0"></row>
<row date="2008-05-30" customerid="1215503286" campaignid="29657924"
adgroupid="1013695484" keywordid="532512868" creativeid="1904811284"
imps="76" clicks="37" cost="2440000" pos="1.3026315789" conv="0"
convValue="0.0" leads="0"></row>


Do you see the difference?
There is one click missing in the new report.

I want to know where that click went. I've looked at how the account
was re-imbursed.. I've looked at the invalid clicks. Things don't
seem to add up.

The company says to me. Your totals are off. And I say back.. That's
weird. They are. Let me look into this. So I go and find that
almost everything is ok, except for here and there, clicks are
missing. But not many. And then I think about.. How would google
detect 1 click of click fraud? They probably implement the ip
restrictions on the first pass, cause it would be really stupid to
filter them out post-date. But one click. Maybe they're actually
computing the probability of click-fraud.

But why would they remove it from the report? And when did they
remove it from the report.

I will start downloading an invalid clicks report along with the daily
reports.. in an effort to see where things go.

Oh well..

Jeff, can you see the missing click data?

-tim

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hello Tim,

I appreciate your frustration and I think you have to take what
you've heard from other Googlers at face value--there is post-
processing done to AdWords data, and that can lead to changes in
reports as the data settles.

Without getting into too many internal details, my expertise and to
some extent ability to effectively escalate issues lies squarely in
the land of the AdWords API. The AdWords API is just one interface
into the reports infrastructure (the AdWords web interface is
obviously another), and the underlying reports backend and AdWords
data processing isn't something that I'm directly involved in. So no,
I don't have much insight about the "missing" click data :-)

Cheers,

-Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team

[CFJ]

"Every morning, one of the very first things we do is to do a complete

account synchronization..."

So the information that you pull back through the API tells you
everything that is NOT deleted on Google's end. If you pull an array
of all keywords that your internal database thinks are active, then
pull an array of keywords that Google says are active, you can hash
through the two datasets. Essentially, pluck everything Google says
is active from the dataset that you think is active. Once done,
you'll end up with two datasets:

The first is your internal dataset of keywords you thought were
active, but Google DID NOT have in their active dataset. Google
doesn't have them, so they must be deleted (or somehow never got
inserted in ther first place even though you thought they were).
Therefore, you can choose to either update the status in your source
system to "deleted", or you can choose to insert those keywords since
you actually wanted them to be there. Either way, once you've hashed
through, the leftovers in your dataset represent a discrepancy that
you need to correct.

The second potential dataset is a list of keywords in the Google
active set that you did not have in your internal active dataset.
Maybe they were marked deleted in your internal system, but somehow
were never deleted on the Google end. Not sure what other reasons
would cause them to be there. Ideally, once you hashed through
Google's set against your set, the Google set would be empty. Just
make sure it is, and decide how to handle the data if it isn't.

On Jun 12, 9:37 am, dshevnock <dshevn...@gmail.com> wrote:

[timprepscius]

Yes, but what if you want all keywords that were EVER created.. Maybe
before you started doing account synchronization..

Aha.. It's just better to have a mechanism that pulls deleted
keywords, than inferring what the deleted keywords may be.

Plus, inferring anything about the behavior of a black-box (even if it
has the name google on it) is hazardous.

Anyway,

Back to Cagliostro

-tim