Discrepancies in Historical monthly search volumes between API and web keyword planner

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William Turrell

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May 10, 2023, 4:31:19 PM5/10/23
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If I add terms to a Keyword Plan and retrieve historical data, it's common for a few months in the web UI (via a CSV download) to have different search volumes to the same data retrieved via the API.

Is this a known issue? Something I'm missing? (The geo_target should be the same for both, not sure what else could be different).

Thanks,
Willim

Dan Thies

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May 10, 2023, 9:00:32 PM5/10/23
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Answered here - https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/LASHwRCl1xQ/m/PegUXzurEAAJ

Google Ads API Forum Advisor

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May 11, 2023, 6:31:29 AM5/11/23
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Hi Dan,

Thank you for sharing the solution to on this thread. This will greatly help the community.

@Will, 

You may check the thread (https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/LASHwRCl1xQ/m/PegUXzurEAAJ) provided by Dan and let us know if you have further question.

Regards,
Google Logo Google Ads API Team


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William Turrell

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May 11, 2023, 10:01:55 AM5/11/23
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The other thread refers to forecast data and I'm looking at Historical metrics.

Can you confirm that TrafficEstimatorService is the old name for the Keyword Planner and this situation applies to historical searches as well? (it seems odd that the API and the web UI would use a different data source.)

I did look at the XHR requests when paging through results in https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner/plan/keywords/historical?... but it didn't help much.

(Thanks)


Google Ads API and AdWords API Forum

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May 12, 2023, 9:11:33 AM5/12/23
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Re-posting the last inquiry (https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/eC6SGX-IgC0) from the forum as it wasn't routed to our support queue.

Regards,
Google Ads API Team

Google Ads API Forum Advisor

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May 12, 2023, 11:09:17 AM5/12/23
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Hi Dan, 

Thank you for coming back to us. I hope you are doing well today.

With regards to your concern, the provided link for KeywordPlanService is indeed used to generate historical metrics. For more information in Google Ads API perspective, you may see the Planning service: Generate Historical Metrics documentation and guidelines.

Please note that TrafficEstimatorService is AdWords API Service and since it’s already migrated to Google Ads API Service, Keyword Planner is one of the equivalent services. See this reference (https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/migration/services?hl=en#:~:text=TrafficEstimatorService).

In addition, kindly note that the full set of Keyword Plan entities needs to be created in order to get Forecasted Metrics or Historical Metrics (search volume data). See Google Ads API: Keyword Planning for full documentation and guidelines.

I hope this information helps. Let us know how it goes on your end after following our Google Ads API guidelines. Furthermore, if you encounter Google Ads API issues or errors, for our team to further compare, investigate, and validate why you are encountering issues, can you provide more information?
 

  • Provide the complete (request and response with request-id) logs with request ID generated as shown in the respective links.
  • Complete or uncropped screenshots from the Google Ads UI (optional for reference)


We do this to check if there’s an error thrown on your side and provide accurate recommendations. 

If you haven't enabled logging yet, it can be enabled by navigating to the Client libraries > Your client library (ex. Java) > Logging documentation, which you can access from this link. For REST interface requests, you can enable logging via the curl command by using the -i flag. This will cause the tool to include the HTTP response headers in the output.

You can provide these via the Reply privately to author option. If this option is not available, then send it instead on this email address googleadsa...@google.com.

Reference links:


Have a great day.

Regards,

William Turrell

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May 16, 2023, 6:49:45 AM5/16/23
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Thanks, the migration reference page answers my question.

William

Dan Thies

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May 16, 2023, 9:38:25 AM5/16/23
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On Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 10:01:55 PM UTC+8 wil...@wturrell.co.uk wrote:
The other thread refers to forecast data and I'm looking at Historical metrics.

Can you confirm that TrafficEstimatorService is the old name for the Keyword Planner and this situation applies to historical searches as well? (it seems odd that the API and the web UI would use a different data source.)

I believe that this is correct. It’s always been the case that the APIs run on different servers/data centers/data stores.

The keyword data is extra weird, because even in the web interface you can get different data between two accounts. The more an advertiser spends the better the data they get but Google deliberately makes it fuzzy for everyone. 

I did look at the XHR requests when paging through results in https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner/plan/keywords/historical?... but it didn't help much.

(Thanks)


On Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 11:31:29 AM UTC+1 Google Ads API Forum Advisor wrote:
Hi Dan,

Thank you for sharing the solution to on this thread. This will greatly help the community.

@Will, 

You may check the thread (https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/LASHwRCl1xQ/m/PegUXzurEAAJ) provided by Dan and let us know if you have further question.

Regards,
Google Logo Google Ads API Team


ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2lGnUr:ref

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Google Ads API Forum Advisor

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May 16, 2023, 11:17:00 AM5/16/23
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Hi William and Dan,

@William - Thank you for responding back to us. We're glad that you're able to find the answer to your question on the provided migration reference. Should you have future concerns directly with Google Ads API, do not hesitate to come back to us and we will be glad to assist you.

@Dan, Thank you for sharing your insight on this. This will greatly help the community.

Jabez Tadesse

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Oct 24, 2023, 4:45:10 AM10/24/23
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Hi, William. Do you mind giving us more insight as to what solved this issue?

You said " Thanks, the migration reference page answers my question." 

Can you please give us a bit more detail? We're also facing the same issues here.

Thanks 😊
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