Why is there no data for some topics in DataForSEO Google Ads API?
If you’ve been using Google Keyword Planner (GKP) or DataForSEO Google Keyword Data API, you could have noticed that, in some cases, there is no data for the search term you’ve entered. We understand your frustration, and we’ll explain why it happens.
First of all, DataForSEO is using Google Ads API as the data source for our Google Keyword Data API. Accordingly, we deliver you the same data as Google provides in its Keyword Planner and through the Ads API. Unfortunately, sometimes GKP or Ads provide none, and we’ll now focus on these cases.
The place to start is Google Advertising Policies. They restrict certain content that may appear in ads, prohibit particular advertising practices and topics, and impose specific requirements for some ad types. Below we will list the main Advertising policies with some examples, but you can also find the full list here.
Google Advertising Policies
- Abusing the ad network — e.g., promoting computer viruses or ransomware
- Counterfeit goods — e.g., using replica, faux, fake with reference to a brand name in ad content
- Dangerous products or services — e.g., explosives, guns, weapons, drugs, tobacco
- Editorial — e.g., using misspellings or replacing letters with symbols in ad content
- Enabling dishonest behavior — e.g., promoting creation of fake IDs, exam-taking services
- Financial products and services — e.g., promoting trade of cryptocurrencies
- Gambling and games — imposes country-based restrictions
- Healthcare and medicines — imposes country-based and substance-based restrictions
- Inappropriate content — e.g., advocating discrimination, promoting romance tours
- Misrepresentation — e.g., impersonating brands or businesses, manipulating trademark terms
- Political content — imposes country-based restrictions and local legal requirements
- Sexual content — e.g., promoting strip clubs or sexual merchandise
Overall, these policies exist to protect users from irresponsible advertisers. However, they do affect some businesses, which mean no harm to users. For example, consider a business selling paintball guns, which are meant for entertainment and in some sense even for sport. They won’t be able to get any data on “paintball guns” searches.
The thing is, GKP and Ads API, in compliance with Google Advertising Policies, do not return data on restricted topics and search terms. This is all, of course, logical, yet theoretical.
The existence and restrictions of Google Advertising Policies do not mean you cannot get any data at all for some of these topics. We’ve seen numerous cases of inconsistency in Google’s restrictions. Oftentimes a longer phrase instead of a broad term does show up with some search volume.
That being said, DataForSEO cannot affect the data Ads API does or does not return for certain keywords, and accordingly the data we provide from this source through Google Keyword Data API. Unfortunately, we never know if Google will return any search volume and other metrics for the keyword(s) you specify.
Hopefully, with the ML behind Google Search getting smarter, they will soon improve their ability to tell good keywords from bad keywords. Until then, we can only build some assumptions and experiment with long-tail keywords.
To learn more about restrictions and workarounds, check out this article on our blog.