Google Ads To Automatically Pause Low-Activity Keywords In June

Google Ads will automatically pause low-activity keywords starting in June 2024. That means campaigns with keywords that were created over 13 months ago and have zero impressions over the past 13 months will be paused.

This is similar to Google Ads automatically pausing inactive ad groups but this is at the keyword level, not ad group level. The Ad groups pause started in March and went through the end of April.

Google sent the following email to Google Ads advertisers that would be impacted by this. Here is the email from Anthony Higman on X:

You are receiving this message because one or more of your Google Ads accounts may be impacted by an upcoming change to how we handle low-activity keywords.

What’s changing?

Starting in June 2024, we will begin to automatically pause low-activity keywords. Positive keywords in search ads campaigns are considered low-activity if they were created over 13 months ago and have zero impressions over the past 13 months.

Why are we making this change?

We want to help advertisers simplify their accounts and focus on keywords that drive results.

Next steps

If you decide that a paused keyword is necessary for your campaign, you can unpause it. However, we strongly recommend that you only unpause keywords that you believe will receive impressions in the coming weeks. Unpaused keywords will be automatically paused again if they don’t receive any impressions over the next 3 months.

Sincerely,
The Google Ads team

Here is a screenshot:

Ginny Marvin responded to some concerns about this on X saying, “To clarify, only keywords that have received zero impressions over the last 13 months will be paused. So it only affects keywords that haven’t driven any traffic to your site in over a year. You’ll still be able to unpause these keywords if you want.” Adding, “The aim is to streamline workflows and simplify ads accounts. If you decide that a paused keyword is necessary to your campaign, you can always re-enable it.”

Here are some of those posts:

Hi Greg, To clarify, only keywords that have received zero impressions over the last 13 months will be paused. So it only affects keywords that haven’t driven any traffic to your site in over a year. You’ll still be able to unpause these keywords if you want.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 30, 2024

Why is it good ?

— Greg Canty (@GregCantyFuzion) April 30, 2024

The aim is to streamline workflows and simplify ads accounts. If you decide that a paused keyword is necessary to your campaign, you can always re-enable it.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 30, 2024

Forum discussion at X.