Announcing Changes to the TrafficEstimatorService

Monday, October 31, 2005


In an effort to provide more consistent and accurate keyword data to our developers and advertisers, we will be changing some of the fields within the KeywordEstimate object on Thursday, November 3rd.

We will add the following field to the KeywordEstimate object:

  • clicksPerDay – (float) The estimated number of clicks generated per day for a keyword in a given ad group

Similarly, we will remove the following fields from the KeywordEstimate object:
  • impressions – The estimated number of impressions for a given keyword
  • ctr – The estimated click-through-rate for a given keyword.
  • notShownPerDay – The estimated number of times that the ad would not be shown, despite a keyword match.

These changes will take effect on the afternoon of Thursday, November 3rd (Pacific time zone). At that time, we will update the TrafficEstimatorService WSDL which may disrupt the operation of your programs. Therefore, we have posted a temporary copy of the “new” TrafficEstimatorService WSDL at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/wsdl_preview.xml so you can begin making the necessary adjustments now (This temporary copy will be removed on November 4, 2005, after the normal WSDL location is updated).

We are in the process of updating the AdWords API Developer Guide and plan to have these new fields added on Thursday.

--Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

Updating your Shared AdWords Logins

Monday, October 24, 2005


As you may have heard, we're updating our AdWords login system to Google Accounts. Starting in early November, you and your clients will be invited to update your account(s).

By updating your account, you will be able to establish multiple logins for your AdWords accounts, leverage change history to gain visibility into what changes users are making, and address the security risks and management hassles associated with shared logins.

Since you share access to your AdWords account with your clients, we wanted to pass along some best practices for updating shared accounts.

In early November, you will be asked to begin the update process (you have until January 15, 2006 to do so). In order to ensure a smooth process that provides uninterrupted access for you and your clients, we recommend that you and your clients review the following information.

Best Practices – Updating shared AdWords logins


  • Be sure to select “No. I might manage this AdWords account with others” during the first step of the update process

  • Create a new username and password that is different from the current AdWords username and password

  • Please advise your client to go through this same process (separate from you), and advise them to:

    • Choose a *different* username/password than you have

    • Avoid using their personal email address as their Google Account, but rather use their business or another professional email account as their login

  • Update your API headers as soon as possible to ensure that future API requests use your new Google Accounts login

    • Note: if you are accessing a client’s account via a My Client Center (MCC) account, be sure to also request that your client provide you with their new username so you can update your API headers accordingly.

  • Complete this update as soon as possible. While all AdWords users will not be required to update their account(s) for the next few months, we strongly suggest that you complete the process in early November, especially with the busy holiday season ahead of us.


While we are changing the AdWords login system, you will not need to re-code your existing applications. In most cases (as noted above), you will have to update your API headers to route future API requests to your new Google Accounts usernames and passwords.

While you and your clients will still be able to use your old account logins for the next several months (provided neither of you disable the old login), the old logins will be disabled automatically in early 2006. If for some reason you are still using the old login at that time, we will send you an email alert several weeks before we disable the login.

Best Practices Web Seminars

Finally, in order to ensure that you and your client account teams are well educated on the update process, we have scheduled two best practices web seminars. If you would like to learn more about these best practices and the overall update process, please join us for one of these two events:

We hope you find this best practices guide helpful. Feel free to visit the AdWords API Developer Forum to share your experiences and questions with fellow API developers during the update process. And as always, we’ll also post any relevant information on the Forum and the AdWords API blog.

Thank you for your continued support of Google AdWords and the AdWords API.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

System Maintenance – October 21

Wednesday, October 19, 2005


We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 9pm to 11pm PDT on Friday, October 21, 2005. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you will not be able to perform any API operations during this maintenance period.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

New error code coming this week

Monday, October 17, 2005


Later this week we will be adding a new error code to the API: error code 86, Account_Blocked. This error code indicates that the account you are trying to access has been blocked due to suspicious activity.

We are in the process of adding this new information to the Developer Guide. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about account blocking and error code 86, please refer to the FAQ entry "What is Error Code 86 (Account_Blocked)?".

Please note, there have been no changes made to the WSDL as a result of this addition.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Save Time and Bandwidth with Data Compression (Part II)

Wednesday, October 05, 2005


As some of you may remember, I posted a piece on August 12 that explained how you can save time and bandwidth by downloading compressed reports. Well now there’s an easier way to download these reports.

As of this afternoon you can request compressed reports directly from ReportService by calling the new getGzipReportDownloadUrl operation.

getGzipReportDownloadUrl works just like getReportDownloadUrl by returning a URL from which the report with the given job ID can be downloaded. The only difference is that the resulting report is now compressed with gzip. This new operation is the preferred way to get compressed reports.

These details will be fully documented in the AdWords API Developer Guide later today.

That’s it. It’s pretty simple and hopefully pretty efficient for those of you who download several megabytes of reports every day.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

A note about KeywordService deprecation

Tuesday, October 04, 2005


Some developers have expressed concern over our planned deprecation of KeywordService. While we have not yet set a date for final removal, we will notify you at least four weeks prior to shutting KeywordService off.

Until then, we encourage all of our developers to begin using the newer CriterionService as it will ultimately replace the older KeywordService.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist