Google announces new PPC limits due to keyword shortage

Google’s latest announcement of a restriction on PPC campaigns is likely to have wide reaching impact for all users of Google Adwords, and critics have been taking to Twitter to accuse the company of scare-mongering and price hiking.

As of Monday morning, all PPC campaigns “will be restricted to no more than 10 keywords”, said the official Google Adwords blog. “This is due to a worldwide shortage of keywords, which we attribute to the unexpected rise in internet use.”

The changes will take effect automatically, with Google Adwords retaining the ten best-performing keywords in your campaigns, based on click-through ratio and total spend. All additional keywords will be deactivated.

“We’re not deleting all the additional keywords,” said the announcement. “We’re just putting them on hold. When enough keywords become available again, account holders will be able to apply through their Adwords account to have keywords reactivated.”

If you have an Adwords campaign with more than ten keywords, you can select which ten you want to keep by logging in to your account and selecting from two options: “Keep best ten keywords based on value” or “keep keywords with highest search volume”.

Google said it is working on solutions for the keyword shortage. “At present, too many people are using up all the keywords, and we’re running out. However, language is always evolving and we expect new words, brands and colloquialisms to be introduced into common parlance every month. We will be rolling these out as they become available.”

The team working on keyword development is the same team that, last year, launched the innovative Google Blimp Ads and the Translate For Animals app.