Adwords API Problem-Destination URLs LOST!

[searcherati]

AdWords rolled out an update to their API yesterday which has resulted in a few major issues. Basically anybody (themselves or their bid management service) using the API to manage their bids will be affected by this problem. What happens is that when any bid was changed for a keyword using the API, that keyword’s “destination URL” would get deleted and would change to that ad groups default URL. This is happening each time a bid was changed for every keyword.

Obviously, there are big implications like loss of conversion data. This is especially bad for people using conversion data to allocate bids. And the worst thing is that there is no way (that I've found so far) to determine which keywords were affected!

Anybody else have any input on this?

[AussieWebmaster]

This was not limited to bid interfaces. The Google internal tools for mass uploads were also effected as they use the API.

Apparently this occurred on Tuesday and was rolled back yesterday.

http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/2005/09/yesterdays-release-has-been-rolled.html

I would check your info folks.

[searcherati]

Thanks for that blog link, AussieWebmaster.

The sad thing is that even though the update was rolled back, in our case, the keywords whose destination URLs were changed are still the same. Those changes were not rolled back. :mad:

[AussieWebmaster]

Do me a favor and post over at my blog at Threadwatch (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/3930) about this. I have an ad rep team that has implemented the necessary changes... did not think that the individual bidders would have problems.... this should be noted and checked by everyone.

[searcherati]

I'm not sure what you mean by individual bidders.

We use a bid management service that uses the API to manage our bids. Their other clients have also been affected. I'm surprised there isn't more noise about this yet.

PS Added my comment to your blog. Thanks for helping.