Search volume values by Adwords API differ much from values shown by Keyword Planner GUI

[E. O.]

On some keywords (around 30%) i realize that search volume values gotten through querying of AdWords API are different (higher) than those shown by Keyword Planner GUI.

For querying of AdWords API i use standard and latest PHP library by Google. Language and country aren' the cause of the difference - they are checked twice in both of AdWords API querying tool and Keyword Planner.

Could somebody point me to the cause of difference? I was so happy about building the querying tool - it could help me sp much on my research, but without the explaination of this difference i can' fully trust the results by AdWords API.

Thanks in advance an best regards from Berlin!

Egon

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Egon,

Thank you for posting your concern.

To further investigate the issue, could you provide the complete SOAP request and response logs together with the customer ID via Reply privately to author option? Also, you can also provide the screenshot of the result in Keyword Planner GUI and the result displayed in your console where I can see the data discrepancies.

Also, if you haven't enabled the SOAP logging yet, you can enable it by following this guide for PHP client library.

Regards,
Ejay
Google Ads API Team

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[E. O.]

Hey, Ejay! Thank you for fast responding!

As it often happens with issues i experience, just after i post an issue in social networks, like this group or Stack Overflow, i get the solution by myself:)

In this case the causes of higher values from the AdWords API were two:

1. I haven't set explizitely the NetworkSettings parameter to targetGoogleSearch. The API queries per default with targetSearchNetwork.

2. The second cause i realized is, that previous API version (201806) queries historical metrics per default with the timeframe of 24 months. The current, 201809 version queries per default with the timeframe of 12 months.

The question after all: how is it possible to setup the timeframe duration for historical metrics querying?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi,

I am happy to know that your initial issue has been resolved.

Thank you also for providing details on how you resolved the issue.

As for your question on setting up the timeframe duration for generating targeting ideas, you can include the TARGETED_MONTHLY_SEARCHES attribute type in your request. However, I am afraid that the TARGETED_MONTHLY_SEARCHES is the only date range you can use in your request and it only returns the data for the last 12 months.