Google Ads will pause low-activity keywords starting in June

Active keywords with no impressions in the past 13 months will be paused. If you re-enable them, they could be paused again after 3 months.

Google Ads will automatically pause low-activity keywords, starting in June, according to an email sent to advertisers by the Google Ads team.

What is low activity? Campaigns that were created more than 13 months ago and that have had zero impressions in the past 13 months.

Why we care. Navah Hopkins explained it well on LinkedIn: “Keywords with no impressions in your account are dragging down your account performance. We’ve seen documentation from the DOJ trial highlighting an account Quality Score – what do you think having hundreds/thousands of zero impression keywords does to the account?”

Unpausing paused keywords. If you unpause a paused keyword in Google Ads, Google will automatically pause it again if it receives no impressions over the next three months.

Why the change. So advertisers “focus on keywords that drive results,” Google said.

Ad group pause. As a reminder, Google Ads began automatically pausing ad groups with low activity in March.