Click Performance Report - LopRegionCriteriaId is not available for clicks in the US

[do...@predictivebid.com]

Hi,

I tried to run the click performance report for a few accounts/dates, and every time I checked clicks from US locations, the (LOP) region & the metro area were empty (" --"), while the most specific locations were always available, including the country (2840 for the US) and city (most of the times, when available).

Is it a bug? is it intentional?

An example:

Most specific location target (Physical location): 21176 (the state of Texas)

City (Physical location): "--" [makes sense, because this is the state of Texas, not a place inside a city]

Metro area (Physical location): "--"

Region (Physical location): -- [should be 21176, the state of Texas]

Country/Territory (Physical location): 2840 (US)

[do...@predictivebid.com]

api version: v201702

[Sreelakshmi Sasidharan (AdWords API Team)]

Hi, 

In the particular example shared, the criteria Id : 21176 is of target type 'State'. Which means that any target type which is lesser in hierarchy (of a location) would not have a value to report. And the results in your case seems to be as expected. All the three values listed below are somewhat similar to a 'City'.

* City
* Metro Area 
* Region

You could check this guide for better clarity and examples for most common target type(s). If you happen to notice missing data where the target type of the criteria Id is postal code,city etc., Please share the downloaded report along with your client customer Id so that I can debug further. You could also check this forum discussion about the location hierarchy for better clarity. 

Thanks,
Sreelakshmi, AdWords API Team

[do...@predictivebid.com]

I just gave it as an example. I believe in other reports you will see the region as a state, even if the most specific is a state. this is an inconsistent behavior

I have also examples of cities, like 9052894 (Spanish Lake), where no region was available. like I said, I didn't find even one case where I had a region for US locations. I Believe this is a bug

[do...@predictivebid.com]

I forgot to mention: The most specific location was 9052894 and City (Physical location) was 9052894, as I would expect.

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Greetings!

When comparing the UI to the API, it can be a little confusing because phrases like Metro or Region in the UI can get overloaded and encompass multiple things. When it comes to the API, the Geotargets guide is the things we rely on. In the Geotargets guide, there's a link to the AdWords API Location Criteria table. I'll be working off that table to explain what's going on.

One of the things that can seem confusing is that if a specific location in the United States is returned, there is no region. Let's cover that first. If you go into that table and filter by Country Code of US, you'll see that the resulting table has a lot of Target Types. If you then do another filter on top of that of Target Type, you'll see that there isn't an option of Region. In our system, the United States does not have any regions. Some other countries, like China with country code CN, do have regions. That's why the Region field is always -- when the United States is the specific country. In the API, we rely completely on that Target Type to determine if a column gets populated. 

In that table, if you choose Criteria Id 9052894, like you mentioned earlier, you'll see that the target type is City, and that's why the City column gets populated. Another factor that plays into this is the Parent ID in that table. If you have a specific location that is a city, then the city will get populated. If the parent of that item is a state, and then the parent of that state is a country, then the Country column will get populated. We work our way up the chain of parent IDs.

I hope that clears things up a bit! If you need any further help, feel free to reach out.

Best,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[do...@predictivebid.com]

Hi,

Thank you for your response.

1. If you generate a Geo Performance report, with this field: https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports/geo-performance-report#regioncriteriaid, you can clearly see there are states for US locations in the region criteria id, and I've been using this report for a long time - it has always been like this. So, if I understand correctly, in the Geo Performance report it's not the same region definition as in the Click Performance report?

2. If you define a region as a Geo Target with Target Type "Region". How do you define Metro? I don't see it in the Target Type

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hello,

I now see what you're getting at.

Query: SELECT AoiMetroCriteriaId, LopMetroCriteriaId FROM CLICK_PERFORMANCE_REPORT DURING YESTERDAY
Result: Returns only --.
Query: SELECT MetroCriteriaId FROM GEO_PERFORMANCE_REPORT DURING YESTERDAY
Result: Returns IDs for everything.

I ran the queries just as you described and saw that behavior. I would expect that behavior to be consistent across reports. I've filed an issue, and we're working on trying to figure out what's going on. I'll get back to you when we've made more progress on figuring out why there's a difference. Thank you for being so patient in describing this.

Best,

Nadine, AdWords API Team