• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 10, 2021

Searches for "online privacy on Google" rose by more than 50% between spring 2019 and spring 2020, according to Google data.

Most of the data economy practices are invisible to consumers, but one thing is certain -- deciding what risk they want to take as they write recommendations, shop and share information online will rely heavily on the practices that companies like Google put in place to protect them.

Pallavi Naresh, senior product manager for Google Ads, in a post said Google Ads will now show marketers historical data for queries that received impressions but no clicks.

The data will appear in the search terms report for Search and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns. These queries, per Naresh, meet a higher privacy standard.

This data will serve up in query reports received starting February 1, 2021. This update can help identify more relevant keyword themes, making it easier to optimize ad copy, landing pages, and more. It is more consistent with other metrics in Google Ads, Naresh wrote.

“These thresholds ensure user anonymity by only reporting on terms that have seen sufficient search volume across all Google searches,” Naresh wrote in a post. “After making these updates, we heard feedback from many of you that you want more data. Since then, we’ve been exploring new, privacy-safe ways to get you the insights you need to run more effective campaigns.”

Data privacy affects companies worldwide, from the United States to China. Modeled after the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, China enacted a new data privacy law — Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China — on August 20 that will dramatically impact how technology and advertising companies operate in the country after November 1, 2021.

Marketers have complained for years that Google does not provide enough data to properly run search advertising campaigns, despite consumers’ growing expectation of keeping their data private. Now it has become more complicated, whether or not Google enacts this process in China. The way marketers use data continue to change. 

After February 1, 2022, historical query data collected prior to September 1, 2020 will be removed from search terms reports if it doesn’t meet Google’s privacy threshold.

“Our goal is to provide you with a deeper understanding of how your customers find you on Search,” Naresh wrote.

The plan is to provide more resources on the Insights page to help marketers understand the search query themes that drive performance in campaigns — even if those queries don’t appear in the search terms report.