Google deleted historical performance data older than a June 2026 cutoff from the Ads
interface and API — campaign history, keyword performance, search terms, auction insights.
Support tickets about "missing data" all trace back to the same policy change, not an account bug.
What is gone for good
- Search term reports not exported before the cutoff
- Auction insights history
- Keyword-level Quality Score history
What you can still pull back
If GA4 was linked with auto-tagging on, click and session data survived independently:
Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, filtered to google / cpc.
If BigQuery export was enabled on the GA4 property, the raw events_* tables still have it —
query for traffic_source.medium = 'cpc' over the deleted date range.
Any scheduled CSV/Sheets export from before the cutoff also still has the numbers, just not
inside the Ads UI anymore.
The actual fix
Set up a recurring quarterly export (a simple Ads Script writing to Sheets, or a BigQuery
export) so a future retention policy change can't erase your own history again. Waiting for
Google to reverse a data policy is not a strategy.
Full breakdown of exactly what changed and a step-by-step recovery checklist:
Google Ads reporting data deleted - what to do
