Why limit access to search queries?

So Google has decided that they will limit the number search queries advertisers have access to.

I think their rational behind this is to 1. streamline workflow so analysts are not pouring over reams of data to optimise their accounts, 2.encourage the use of automated bidding technology, 3.take away any subjectivity around which is and isn’t likely to deliver a conversion and finally and more crudely 4. to simply make more money for Google.

Some of the points above I do agree with, time shouldn’t be spent forensically looking through SQRs to find negative keywords, but then Google shouldn’t have changed the way Exact match keywords work with the use of close variants. There is moving the goal posts and then simply putting up a wall of secrecy and this now feels like the latter.

I do believe that automation of paid advertising is the future and that using technology to make better and quicker decisions compared to humans will ultimately yield the greatest success. However, analysts want to analyse and human intervention working alongside technology should be the way forwards especially at a time when market conditions and trends across all verticals are changing both for the positive and the negative. As someone who takes satisfaction in understanding what both is and isn’t working in a PPC account, removing search queries takes away our ability to educate a new client on why traffic isn’t converting, or how we build more qualified keywords into the account, or how we increase the size of their keyword footprint and how we are able to do this efficiently using the data the client is already paying for.

We are now moving into a position where we are going to have to simply trust the tools we have at our disposal. Accounts and keywords will always be built with the intention of delivering upon the brief they were from. However, I believe removing search queries will become a barrier of entry to the market for some advertisers, especially those with smaller budgets who are looking to use platforms like Google Ads for the first time and looking to scale quickly using their data. There should be no excuses for sending unqualified traffic to a website, but now there is going to be no choice to this. Advertisers will now need to take advantage of bidding on keywords with high search volume to drive performance of an account, we won’t lose out on the long tail search terms, we just simply wont know what these are.

Is this the death of the keyword, probably not yet but advertisers should be preparing to leverage machine learning tools to optimise their campaigns, future proofing themselves against the new stance Google is taking.