empty Structure Reports, such as KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT

[HK]

As seen temporarily on 6/16, we are again getting empty reports from Google, for example the KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT. This seems to have started yesterday again. See this post for details. We don't request any metric fields. We have been make the same calls for 8 years and only seen this twice, on 6/16 and starting again yesterday. The issue on 6/16 went away by itself without us making any changes. It is extremely important that we get this resolved asap as we have a big "Upgraded URL" migration today and tomorrow.

It'd be much appreciated if someone could take a look at this as soon as possible.

Hans

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Hans,

Are you using the same fields you mentioned in your other post? I ask because I just ran a report against a test account (which has no impressions) using your field selections and predicates, and the response was non-empty. I re-ran this multiple times, and in each case I received rows.

Does your request explicitly exclude zero impressions? Also, if you're running these reports for the date range of TODAY, you may have to wait a bit to get results (per the data freshness guide).

Cheers,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[HK]

Hi, Josh

We are using the same columns as mentioned in the beginning of the other post, so...

"AdGroupId, Id, CampaignId, KeywordText, CriteriaDestinationUrl, Status, CpcBid, CpmBid, KeywordMatchType, FirstPageCpc, QualityScore, IsNegative, CpcBidSource, FinalUrls, FinalMobileUrls, FinalAppUrls, TrackingUrlTemplate, UrlCustomParameters

with the following predicates

Status: NOT_EQUALS REMOVED

AdGroupStatus: NOT_EQUALS REMOVED

CampaignStatus: NOT_EQUALS REMOVED

and a dateRangeType of TODAY"

This hasn't changed in years except for the recent addition of FinalUrls, FinalMobileUrls, FinalAppUrls, TrackingUrlTemplate and UrlCustomParameters. I wouldn't think the freshness would make a difference here as we are not requesting any metrics and the reports go from having thousands of rows to zero when this issue occurs.

We set includeZeroImpressions to false in the request header, but I wouldn't think that matters when no metric columns are requested.

Thanks,

Hans

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Hans,

Just to be 100% clear: when you get zero rows back, the request still succeeds (no error is returned), correct?

If you have the date/time + timezone of a request that returned zero rows + the customer ID (xxx-xxx-xxxx), could you pass those along so I can investigate further?

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[HK]

Josh,

Correct, the request succeeds (no error) and it returns no rows.

An example of such a request was done at 6/23/2015 5:06:22 PM PDT for customer ID 3837500421. It had includeZeroImpressions set to false. We just discovered that setting includeZeroImpressions to true does indeed resolve the issue. Such a request was sent for the same customer ID at 6/23/2015 5:11:20 PM PDT.

We should be able to implement that code change tomorrow, but we're still surprised that the behavior appears to be randomly changing from one day to another. When it does return no rows, all our merchants seem to be affected. If this is a planned

change from your side, it'd be great if it was announced as an upcoming change before it was implemented.

Thanks,
Hans

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Hans,

To my knowledge, requests with includeZeroImpressions=false have always excluded zero impression rows, and I'm not aware of any recent changes that would have modified that behavior.

I've been looking into your requests, and I'm wondering if you have different versions of your code (or different applications) submitting reporting requests. The reason I ask is that I looked at all KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT requests for that customer and from your developer token over the last 7 days, and I see the following:

+-------------------------+------------------------+

| Time                    | includeZeroImpressions |

+-------------------------+------------------------+

| 2015-06-22 11:29:21 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-22 13:38:09 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-23 17:06:22 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-23 17:11:20 PDT | 1                      |

+-------------------------+------------------------+

These requests were all for the date range of TODAY and the following field list:

AdGroupId, Id, CampaignId, KeywordText, CriteriaDestinationUrl, Status, CpcBid, CpmBid, KeywordMatchType, FirstPageCpc, QualityScore, IsNegative, CpcBidSource, FinalUrls, FinalMobileUrls, FinalAppUrls, TrackingUrlTemplate, UrlCustomParameters

However, the request in green submitted includeZeroImpressions=true, while all of the others submitted includeZeroImpressions=false. I would expect the request in green to return rows, but the requests in yellow to only return rows with impressions.

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[HK]

Josh,

Thanks for all your work on this. Looking at the history for that account is not applicable as it's a production test account I haven't used in a while. I just revived yesterday to repro the problem and test flipping that flag from false to true. Here is a better example where all the requests should have been made with includeZeroImpressions=false.

Customer ID: 4679802771

6/18/2015 7:50:14 PM - Keywords returned: 166

6/19/2015 7:50:41 PM - Keywords returned: 166

6/20/2015 7:51:14 PM - Keywords returned: 166

6/21/2015 7:50:18 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/22/2015 7:50:02 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/23/2015 7:50:11 PM - Keywords returned: 0

[HK]

Josh,

Please ignore my most recent post above. Let me verify that I give you a relevant example first. Don't want to waste your time on bad data.

Hans

[HK]

Josh, please use this customer instead:

Customer ID: 6338953138

6/17/2015 10:15:53 PM - Keywords returned: 31515

6/18/2015 10:15:10 PM - Keywords returned: 31515

6/19/2015 10:15:40 PM - Keywords returned: 31515

6/20/2015 10:16:46 PM - Keywords returned: 31515

6/21/2015 10:15:17 PM - Keywords returned: 31515

6/22/2015 1:10:13 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/22/2015 5:15:47 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/22/2015 10:15:50 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/23/2015 9:27:01 AM - Keywords returned: 0

6/23/2015 12:21:04 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/23/2015 3:21:41 PM - Keywords returned: 0

6/23/2015 10:14:54 PM - Keywords returned: 0

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Hans,

Here's what I see for that customer's requests:

+-------------------------+------------------------+

| Time                    | includeZeroImpressions |

+-------------------------+------------------------+

| 2015-06-18 22:15:10 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-19 22:15:40 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-20 22:16:46 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-21 22:15:17 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-22 13:10:14 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-22 17:15:47 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-22 22:15:50 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-23 09:27:02 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-23 12:21:04 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-23 15:21:41 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-23 22:14:55 PDT | 0                      |

| 2015-06-24 11:07:24 PDT | 1                      |

| 2015-06-24 20:38:10 PDT | 1                      |

+-------------------------+------------------------+

I'm assuming that your developer token starts with "FQC". Is that correct?

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[HK]

Josh,

This all looks correct. We deployed a permanent patch 6/24 around 7 pm PDT, so that the requests now use includeZeroImpressions=true as you can see from the last runs.

With the patch, this is no longer urgent/important for us, but there has definitely been a change in the behavior this flag has for report requests not including any metrics as you can see from the number of items returned in the requests. The fact that the number of items returned (31515) every day is identical, suggests that the data is static and not based on performance, I would think.

Note that we were having the same issue with CRITERIA_PERFORMANCE_REPORT and AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT.

Hans

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Hans,

Thanks for looking over the stats. Even though your fix will take care of the problem on your side, I've raised this issue with the reporting team to see if there were any recent changes that would cause the behavior you described.

Cheers,

Josh, AdWords API Team