Low data using "Most Specific Location" even with "IsTargetingLocation IN [true, false]"

[Stephen Howe]

Hi all,

I am trying to report on users by county in the UK through the AdWords API, using the following AWQL query: 

SELECT 
  Date, 
  MostSpecificCriteriaId, 
  CountryCriteriaId, 
  Impressions, 
  Clicks, 
  Cost, 
  Conversions, 
  ConversionValue
FROM 
  GEO_PERFORMANCE_REPORT
WHERE
  IsTargetingLocation IN [true, false]
  AND LocationType = LOCATION_OF_PRESENCE
  AND MostSpecificCriteriaId IN [1007200,1007406,1007432,1007144,9041106,9041110,9041129,9041125,1007131,9041124,9041111,9041115,1007331,9041128,9041117,1007165,9041112,9041100,9041113,9041126,9041122,9041119,9041085,9041121,9041096,9041093,9041087,1006676,9041107,9041088,9041095,9041103,9041127,9041090,9041108,9041123,9041098,9041118,9041094,9041102,9041089,9041097,9041116,9041120,9041092,9041091,9041104,1007172,9041101,9041086,9041114,9041084,9041099,9041105,9041109]
DURING 20181217,20190617

The list of MostSpecificCriteriaId in the WHERE condition are all the criteria IDs of the UK counties, according to the geotargets section of the API.

These locations aren't targeted by my campaigns, so I added the condition 

WHERE IsTargetingLocation IN [true, false]

hoping that I could get performance data for these locations.

I also enforced LOCATION_OF_PRESENCE in order to only report on people who are really in these locations.

However, the traffic data I receive is extremely low when compared to the total UK traffic. The resulting report only contains 1% of the clicks and conversions throughout the whole country during this time period. Why is this the case?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Stephen,

So I can better investigate, could you provide your clientCustomerId? You may reply using the Reply privately to author option.

Additionally, could you provide more details as to how you were able to observe that the metrics returned by the report was significantly lower? Could you share which other view or report you were referring to?

Thanks and regards,
Peter
Google Ads API Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001UBnuGZ:ref

[Stephen Howe]

Hi Peter,

Any update on this?

Thanks

Stephen

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Stephen,

I sent a private response to you yesterday, were you able to receive it? If not, no worries, below are the contents of my reply :

"Thank you so much for providing the other query that you used to observe the discrepancies. However, it would appear that your concern is more product related due to it being about how location criteria accumulate metrics and how they are attributed in the reports.

That said, you may reach out to the product experts via the Google Ads Community Forum as they are better equipped to assist you. I hope this helps."

Best regards,