Keyword data and its limits
Knowing a call came from "replacement sash windows cheltenham" is more useful than knowing it came from Google. Where the platform reports the keyword, we resolve it and attach it to the call.
Often it does not report one, and that is worth understanding before you spend anything on tracking it.
Which campaign types report keywords
| Campaign type | Keyword available? |
|---|---|
| Search | Yes — reliably |
| Shopping | No |
| Performance Max | No |
| Display | No |
| Demand Gen | No |
| Video | No |
This is Google's decision, not a limitation of ours. Their reporting API simply does not expose keyword data for those campaign types, so no call tracking product can give it to you — if one appears to, it is inferring or guessing.
This matters more than it used to. Performance Max now accounts for the majority of spend on many accounts. On a real advertiser we measured during development, Search clicks carried a keyword 17 out of 17 times and Performance Max 0 out of 306 — and PMax was 92% of their paid clicks.
For that advertiser, keyword-level call tracking was impossible for almost all of their traffic. No amount of spending on tracking numbers would change it, because the keyword never existed to be resolved.
What you still get
Keyword-less does not mean attribution-less. For every one of those clicks we still know:
- the campaign and, where reported, the ad group
- the channel — paid search, organic, social, referral, direct
- the landing page they arrived on
- the device
- and, once you import revenue, what that click was ultimately worth
Campaign-level revenue attribution is the part that changes bidding. Keyword detail is useful for a Search account and largely unavailable elsewhere.
We tell you your own split
Rather than leaving you to work it out, the attribution screen reports what share of your paid clicks can carry a keyword — and it will tell you plainly when the answer means a number pool is not worth buying.
A session pool costs one number per concurrent visitor instead of one per campaign, and its only advantage is keyword resolution. If most of your traffic cannot carry a keyword, that money buys nothing, and Proofbell says so rather than selling you numbers.
Why we would rather lose that sale. Selling keyword tracking to a Performance Max advertiser means taking money for something Google will not supply. They would find out, and be right to ask for it back.
Where a blank keyword comes from
A call with no keyword shows the reason rather than an empty cell, because the reasons need different responses:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The keyword | Resolved from Google's reporting. |
| "no keyword available for this ad type" | Performance Max, Shopping, Display or similar. Expected, and permanent. |
| Pending | The click is not in Google's reporting yet. It lags real time by hours, so a call taken this morning may resolve this afternoon. |
| Not found | Google has no record of that click. Usually an invalid click they filtered, or a privacy-restricted click identifier. |
| Nothing at all | The visitor did not arrive from a paid click — organic, direct or referral. Still attributed to a channel. |
The 90-day window
Google's click reporting is only queryable for 90 days. We resolve keywords within minutes to hours of a call, so this is not usually visible — but a click older than 90 days can no longer be looked up, which is one reason we resolve promptly rather than in batches.
Microsoft Ads and others
Microsoft Ads reports keywords for search campaigns and we intend to support it. It is not built yet. Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn do not expose per-click keyword data at all — the concept barely applies to interest-based targeting.