Query Structure

AI-generated Key Takeaways

• Queries for resource, segment, and metric fields can be sent to GoogleAdsService Search or SearchStream methods.

• A Google Ads Query Language query is made up of clauses: SELECT, FROM, WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, and PARAMETERS.

• The SELECT and FROM clauses are required in a query when using GoogleAdsService, while the other clauses are optional.

• The GoogleAdsFieldService provides metadata about resource fields, segment fields, metrics, and their relationships for Google Ads Query Language clients.

Queries for resource, segment, and metric fields can be sent to GoogleAdsService Search or SearchStream methods. To construct a query in Google Ads Query Language, you will need to build it using the language grammar. A query is made up of a number of clauses:

• SELECT
• FROM
• WHERE
• ORDER BY
• LIMIT
• PARAMETERS

Clauses use field names, resource names, operators, conditions, and orderings to help you select the correct data. When combined into a single query, a request can be made using Google Ads API.

Key Point: The GoogleAdsFieldService provides a catalog for Google Ads Query Language clients with metadata about all of the resource fields, segment fields, and metrics, as well as their relationships to each other and availability in each clause as defined below. For more details, refer to the documentation for GoogleAdsField.

Clauses

Video: GAQL Field Compatibility

SELECT

The SELECT clause specifies a set of fields to fetch in the request. SELECT takes a comma-separated list of resource fields, segment fields, and metrics, returning the values in the response. The SELECT clause is required in a query.

The sample query below shows an example of selecting attributes for a given resource:

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  campaign.name
FROM campaign

You can request different field types in a single request, for example:

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  campaign.name,
  bidding_strategy.id,
  bidding_strategy.name,
  segments.device,
  segments.date,
  metrics.impressions,
  metrics.clicks
FROM campaign
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

• Resource fields

  • campaign.id
  • campaign.name

• Resource fields

  • bidding_strategy.id
  • bidding_strategy.name

• Segment fields

  • segments.device
  • segments.date

• Metrics

  • metrics.impressions
  • metrics.clicks

Some fields may not be allowed in the SELECT clause, due to the following restrictions:

• Querying fields that are not selectable. These fields will have their Selectable metadata attribute marked as false.
• Selecting attributes of repeated fields. These fields will have their isRepeated metadata attribute marked as true.
• Selecting fields that are not available for the given resource in the FROM clause. Attributes of some resources cannot be selected together, also only a subset of all metrics and segments will be available for the resource in the FROM clause.
• Selecting segments or metrics that are not compatible with each other. For more information on this, see the segmentation section.

Information related to the above conditions can be found in our reference docs or from GoogleAdsFieldService.

FROM

The FROM clause specifies the main resource that will be returned. The resource in the FROM clause defines what fields can be used all of the other clauses for the given query. Only a single resource can be specified in the FROM clause. The FROM clause is required in a query to the GoogleAdsService Search or SearchStream methods. However, the FROM clause should not be specified when using GoogleAdsFieldService.

While only one resource can exist in the FROM clause for a given query, fields from Attributed Resources may be available as well. These resources are implicitly joined with the resource in the FROM clause, so you only need to add their attributes to the SELECT clause to return their values. Not all resources have Attributed Resources. In the following example you can request both the ad group ID and the campaign ID from ad groups:

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  ad_group.id
FROM ad_group

The resource_name field of the main resource is always returned. In the following example, ad_group.resource_name will be included in the response despite not being explicitly selected in the query:

SELECT ad_group.id
FROM ad_group

The same is true for other resources when at least one field is selected. For example: campaign.resource_name will be included in the response for the following query:

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  ad_group.id
FROM ad_group

Key Point: If the resource in the FROM clause lists another resource as a segment, then selecting any attributes of that resource will act as a segment.

WHERE

The WHERE clause specifies conditions to apply when filtering data for the request. When using the WHERE clause, one or more conditions can be specified using AND to separate them. Each condition should follow the pattern field_name Operator value. The WHERE clause is optional in a query.

The following is an example of using WHERE to return metrics from a given time period:

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  campaign.name,
  metrics.impressions
FROM campaign
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

You can combine multiple conditions to filter the data. This example will request the number of clicks for all campaigns with impressions on mobile in the last 30 days.

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  campaign.name,
  segments.device,
  metrics.clicks
FROM campaign
WHERE metrics.impressions > 0
  AND segments.device = MOBILE
  AND segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

Segments in the WHERE clause must be in the SELECT clause, with the following date segments, which are referred to as core date segments, being exceptions:

• segments.date
• segments.week
• segments.month
• segments.quarter
• segments.year

In the following query, note that segments.date is selected. Because this segment is a core date segment, it requires a finite date range composed of core date segments in the WHERE clause to be provided.

SELECT
  campaign.id,
  campaign.name,
  segments.date,
  metrics.clicks
FROM campaign
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

All segments that meet the above condition are: segments.date, segments.week, segments.month, segments.quarter, and segments.year. If any of these segments are selected, at least one of them must be used in the WHERE clause.

Key Point: The separator AND can only be used between operator conditions (WHERE segments.device != "DESKTOP" AND segments.device != "MOBILE"), and not within a single operator condition (WHERE segments.device != "DESKTOP" AND "MOBILE"),

When filtering, the case-sensitivity of your operator is important to keep in mind. See Case sensitivity for more details.

For a complete list of operators, consult the language grammar.

ORDER BY

The ORDER BY clause specifies the order in which the results are to be returned. This lets you arrange the data in ascending or descending order based on a field name. Each ordering is specified as a field_name followed by ASC or DESC. If neither ASC nor DESC is specified, the order defaults to ASC. The ORDER BY clause is optional in a query.

The following query orders the returned campaigns by the number of clicks from highest to lowest:

SELECT
  campaign.name,
  metrics.clicks
FROM campaign
ORDER BY metrics.clicks DESC

You can specify multiple fields in the ORDER BY clause using a comma-separated list. The ordering will occur in the same sequence as specified in the query. For example, in this query selecting ad group data, the results will be sorted in ascending order by campaign name, then in descending order by number of impressions, then in descending order by number of clicks:

SELECT
  campaign.name,
  ad_group.name,
  metrics.impressions,
  metrics.clicks
FROM ad_group
ORDER BY
  campaign.name,
  metrics.impressions DESC,
  metrics.clicks DESC

LIMIT

The LIMIT clause lets you specify the number of results to be returned. This is useful if you're only interested in a summary.

For example, LIMIT can be used to restrict the total number of results for the following query:

SELECT
  campaign.name,
  ad_group.name,
  segments.device,
  metrics.impressions
FROM ad_group
ORDER BY metrics.impressions DESC
LIMIT 50

Key Point: LIMIT lets you truncate the results. Use GoogleAdsService.Search to handle long lists of results.

PARAMETERS

The PARAMETERS clause lets you specify meta parameters for the request. These parameters may impact what kinds of rows are returned.

The following meta parameters are supported:

include_drafts

Set include_drafts to true to allow draft entities to be returned. Defaults to false.

For example, the following query fetches draft campaigns along with regular campaigns:

SELECT campaign.name
FROM campaign
PARAMETERS include_drafts=true

omit_unselected_resource_names

Set omit_unselected_resource_names to true to prevent the resource name of each resource type in the response from being returned unless explicitly requested in the SELECT clause. Defaults to false.

Note: If you plan to use any of the returned objects for update or remove operations, then we recommend setting this option to false because resources without resource names cannot be used in mutate operations. If you set this option to true, make sure you explicitly request the resource names of both the primary resource and any attribute resources you fetch using the query.

omit_unselected_resource_names examples
SELECT campaign.name, customer.id FROM campaign	Returned resources: campaign.resource_name customer.resource_name omit_unselected_resource_names defaults to false, so all resource_name fields are returned.
SELECT campaign.name, customer.id FROM campaign PARAMETERS omit_unselected_resource_names = true	Returned resources: None. omit_unselected_resource_names is specified as true and campaign.resource_name and customer.resource_name are not part of the SELECT clause.
SELECT campaign.name, campaign.resource_name FROM campaign PARAMETERS omit_unselected_resource_names = true	Returned resource: campaign.resource_name omit_unselected_resource_names is specified as true and campaign.resource_name requested as part of the SELECT clause.

Additional language rules

In addition to the examples for each clause, Google Ads Query Language has the following behaviors that can be utilized:

• It's not required for the main resource field to be in the SELECT clause for a query. For example, you might want to only use one or more main resource fields to filter data:

  SELECT campaign.id
  FROM ad_group
  WHERE ad_group.status = PAUSED
  

• Metrics can be exclusively selected for a given resource; no other fields from the resource are required in the query:

  SELECT
    metrics.impressions,
    metrics.clicks,
    metrics.cost_micros
  FROM campaign
  

• Segmentation fields can be selected without any accompanying resource fields or metrics:

  SELECT segments.device FROM campaign
  

• The resource_name field (campaign.resource_name, for example) can be used to filter or order data:

  SELECT
    campaign.id,
    campaign.name
  FROM campaign
  WHERE campaign.resource_name = 'customers/1234567/campaigns/987654'