AdWords Change: Remove vs Deleted Status

Google is making a change to the AdWords interface and reporting features, changing usages of the word “Deleted” to “Removed”. This is a change to help users of the AdWords online advertising service realize that “deleted” items are still available for use or reference.

Advertisers who make use of non-interface based scripting, macros or spreadsheet tools will need to update usages prior to the go-live date, projected to be July 21, 2014. Without updating, macros and scripts that rely on the word “delete” will no longer function.

Users of the AdWords service typically use the delete function to assist with viewing large accounts with many campaigns. The delete/remove function does not permenantly disable anything, but merely removes items from default views.

AdWords users who make use of the AdWords API will notice that this change is reflected in future releases of the API. Existing API users will not face immediate deprecation for “delete” functions. While a sunsete or deprecation has not been formally announced, Google tends to keep their APIs as clean as possible. I would expect that in future releases of the API, references to “Delete” will be slowly deprecated, and likely sunset over the course of the next few API releases. That is purely speculative though.

Read the Google+ post from GoogleAds related to this topic: AdWords Wording Change: Delete replacedy with Removed.