Heads up! Paused Keywords Potentially Re-Enabled in Google Ads

Where this was first surfaced

The issue was initially flagged publicly by performance marketing consultant Francesco Cifardi on LinkedIn, and later highlighted by Search Engine Land.

What’s being reported

Some advertisers are seeing that a system tool in Google Ads labeled “Low activity system bulk changes” appears to be automatically re-enabling previously paused keywords.

In Change History, these actions show up as automated bulk updates, with a visible “Undo” option.

Historically, this tool has primarily been associated with pausing inactive elements, not reactivating them. Which is why this shift is raising concern.

What we don’t know (yet)

At this time there’s no public documentation from Google explaining this behavior. It’s unclear whether this is:

An intentional feature update
A limited experiment
Or a bug
The trigger conditions for reactivation are unknown.
The scope of affected accounts remains unclear.

Why this matters

Unexpected keyword reactivation can:

Quietly increase spend
Disrupt pacing and budget forecasting
Reintroduce previously filtered traffic
Override deliberate structural decisions

How to Monitor This Efficiently in Fyr

By using the automation in Fyr to manage search terms you don't want to rank on, you have a significant advantage here.

In Fyr, you can add a “Irrelevant” tag to any search term you want included in your negative keyword list in Google Ads (after enabling the automation). If you've been adding search terms/keywords to your negative lists directly from Fyr, you can:

Simply sort or filter by the “Irrelevant” tag
Instantly review all search terms that were intentionally excluded
Quickly spot if any formerly paused or excluded terms have reappeared

This allows you to audit in seconds whether traffic has resumed on terms that were previously filtered out, without manually digging through change logs.

It’s a fast, structured way to validate that your negative keyword strategy is still being enforced as intended.