Google Ads may be automatically enabling paused keywords in your advertising accounts. I am waiting for a statement from Google on this but there are reports that this is being done through the low activity system bulk changes.
This was spotted by Francesco Cifardi who wrote on LinkedIn over the weekend, "So apparently the internal tool that handles "Low activity system bulk changes" also enables keywords. First time it happens to me. Anyone else has seen the same in their Google Ads accounts?"
I did tag Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, but I assume this will take some time to dig into.
Here is his screenshot of the change log:
Adriaan Dekker added, "Several advertisers have reported seeing activity log entries showing paused keywords being enabled via automated bulk updates something that historically only paused inactive elements rather than reactivating them." I am not sure if I saw anyone else complain about this, but Adriaan said he has.
Have any of you seen this?
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
Update: Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, responded to this on February 19th saying:
Any keywords enabled from “low activity system bulk change” are exclusively keywords that were previously auto-paused due to low activity. No user- paused keywords were considered or changed. The behavior is uncommon, but was an expected action for the select, auto-paused keywords that our system deemed non-low activity at that time. Our engineering teams are looking at ways to improve this experience.
