Google Ads API Reporting with GAQL: Anatomy + Copy-Paste Queries [2026]

Every morning, a script pulls GAQL reports against nine client accounts before I'm at my desk — spend, search terms, conversions, asset performance. None of that runs without the auth chain working first, which I covered in the authentication guide. If your google-ads.yaml and OAuth flow aren't wired up yet, start there — this post picks up exactly where that one ends, with a working connection and no idea yet what to actually ask it.

This is the part nobody hands you as a cheat sheet: the anatomy of a GAQL query, when to use search() versus searchStream(), twelve report queries pulled straight from my own account-monitoring scripts, and the traps that produce a query that runs fine but returns the wrong thing — or doesn't validate at all.

Anatomy of a GAQL query

Per Google's own query language overview, GAQL supports five clauses: SELECT, FROM, WHERE, ORDER BY, and LIMIT (plus an optional PARAMETERS clause for edge cases). Only SELECT and FROM are required — a query against GoogleAdsFieldService, used to inspect field metadata, even drops FROM entirely and keeps just SELECT and WHERE.

Every field you put in SELECT falls into one of four categories, and the category determines what you're allowed to combine it with:

One easy mistake: a resource attribute on the FROM resource itself comes back "for free" once you select anything from it, but an attribute of an attributed resource — ad_group.name when your FROM is campaign, for instance — has to be selected explicitly, or it simply isn't in the response.

WHERE supports a longer operator list than plain SQL gives you. Per the GAQL grammar reference:

= != > >= < <= IN NOT IN
LIKE NOT LIKE
CONTAINS ANY  CONTAINS ALL  CONTAINS NONE
IS NULL  IS NOT NULL
DURING  BETWEEN
REGEXP_MATCH  NOT REGEXP_MATCH

LIKE only works on string fields, not arrays — use CONTAINS ANY/ALL/NONE for array fields instead. REGEXP_MATCH runs on RE2 syntax, and DURING pairs with a fixed set of date-range literals rather than arbitrary date math:

LAST_7_DAYS   LAST_14_DAYS   LAST_30_DAYS   LAST_BUSINESS_WEEK
LAST_MONTH    LAST_WEEK_MON_SUN   LAST_WEEK_SUN_SAT
THIS_MONTH    THIS_WEEK_MON_TODAY   THIS_WEEK_SUN_TODAY
TODAY   YESTERDAY

ORDER BY takes a field name with an optional ASC or DESC, and LIMIT takes a positive integer. Both are optional, but every report query below uses at least one — Google's docs recommend selecting only the fields you actually need, and the field reference is worth a bookmark before you write anything nontrivial.

search() vs. searchStream() — which one to call

Both methods run the same GAQL and return the same GoogleAdsRow objects, per Google's reporting overview. The difference is entirely in how the response arrives.

In my own stack, every module in ppc_ops — the nightly script that walks nine client accounts — calls search(), not searchStream(). The accounts are in the thousands-of-rows range, not millions, so explicit pagination control costs nothing and keeps the code simpler to debug when a report comes back wrong. searchStream() earns its keep once you're scanning an entire MCC at once and the row count climbs into the tens of thousands — a single call still costs one operation either way, which is the detail worth remembering when you're budgeting against a daily quota.

12 copy-paste GAQL reports

These are anonymized, working queries — most pulled directly out of scripts that run against live client accounts every morning. A few are flagged below as standard patterns rather than lifted from a specific file. Swap the date ranges and status filters for your own.

1. Campaign spend, last 30 days

SELECT campaign.name, campaign.status, campaign.id,
       segments.date, metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks,
       metrics.cost_micros, metrics.conversions, metrics.conversions_value
FROM campaign
WHERE campaign.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

2. Search terms report for a period

SELECT search_term_view.search_term, search_term_view.status,
       campaign.name, campaign.advertising_channel_type, ad_group.name,
       metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks, metrics.cost_micros,
       metrics.conversions, metrics.conversions_value
FROM search_term_view
WHERE segments.date BETWEEN '2026-01-01' AND '2026-01-31'

3. Conversions by day, for pacing and trend checks

SELECT campaign.id, segments.date,
       metrics.cost_micros, metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks,
       metrics.conversions, metrics.conversions_value
FROM campaign
WHERE segments.date BETWEEN '2026-01-01' AND '2026-03-31'

One 90-day pull, sliced into 7-day/30-day/prior-period windows locally afterward, instead of four separate calls — the API charges per call, not per row.

4. Keyword performance with Quality Score

SELECT
    campaign.name,
    ad_group.name,
    ad_group_criterion.keyword.text,
    ad_group_criterion.keyword.match_type,
    ad_group_criterion.quality_info.quality_score,
    ad_group_criterion.quality_info.creative_quality_score,
    ad_group_criterion.quality_info.post_click_quality_score,
    ad_group_criterion.quality_info.search_predicted_ctr,
    metrics.cost_micros,
    metrics.clicks,
    metrics.impressions,
    metrics.conversions,
    metrics.conversions_value,
    metrics.ctr,
    metrics.search_impression_share
FROM keyword_view
WHERE campaign.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND ad_group_criterion.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND segments.date BETWEEN '2026-01-01' AND '2026-01-31'
  AND metrics.cost_micros > 0
ORDER BY metrics.cost_micros DESC

The metrics.cost_micros > 0 filter is deliberate — it drops zero-spend keywords out of a Quality Score report, where they're noise rather than signal.

5. RSA asset performance and ad strength

SELECT ad_group_ad.ad.id,
       ad_group_ad.ad.type,
       ad_group_ad.ad.responsive_search_ad.headlines,
       ad_group_ad.ad.responsive_search_ad.descriptions,
       ad_group_ad.ad_strength,
       ad_group_ad.status,
       ad_group_ad.policy_summary.approval_status,
       ad_group_ad.policy_summary.policy_topic_entries,
       ad_group.id, ad_group.name, ad_group.status,
       campaign.id, campaign.name, campaign.status,
       campaign.advertising_channel_type,
       metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks, metrics.cost_micros,
       metrics.conversions
FROM ad_group_ad
WHERE ad_group_ad.status != 'REMOVED'
  AND campaign.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND segments.date BETWEEN '2026-01-01' AND '2026-01-31'

6. PMax asset group ad strength

SELECT asset_group.id, asset_group.name, asset_group.status,
       asset_group.ad_strength, campaign.name, campaign.status
FROM asset_group
WHERE asset_group.status != 'REMOVED' AND campaign.status = 'ENABLED'

7. Conversion action setup audit

SELECT
    conversion_action.id,
    conversion_action.name,
    conversion_action.type,
    conversion_action.status,
    conversion_action.category,
    conversion_action.primary_for_goal,
    conversion_action.counting_type,
    conversion_action.attribution_model_settings.attribution_model,
    conversion_action.value_settings.default_value,
    conversion_action.value_settings.always_use_default_value
FROM conversion_action
WHERE conversion_action.status = 'ENABLED'
ORDER BY conversion_action.primary_for_goal DESC

Useful as a first check on any new account — primary goal, counting type, and attribution model, in one call, before touching Smart Bidding.

8. Change event log — an audit trail of who changed what

SELECT change_event.change_date_time,
       change_event.change_resource_type,
       change_event.change_resource_name,
       change_event.client_type,
       change_event.user_email,
       change_event.changed_fields,
       change_event.resource_change_operation,
       change_event.old_resource,
       change_event.new_resource,
       campaign.name,
       ad_group.name
FROM change_event
WHERE change_event.change_date_time >= '2026-08-01 00:00:00'
  AND change_event.change_date_time <= '2026-08-29 23:59:59'
ORDER BY change_event.change_date_time DESC
LIMIT 1000

change_event is a resource where both the date filter and LIMIT are non-negotiable, and both come with hard caps — the date range can't reach back more than 30 days, and LIMIT can't exceed 10,000. See the trap below.

9. Effective target on portfolio (shared) bidding strategies

SELECT bidding_strategy.id,
       bidding_strategy.name,
       bidding_strategy.type,
       bidding_strategy.status,
       bidding_strategy.campaign_count,
       bidding_strategy.maximize_conversion_value.target_roas,
       bidding_strategy.target_roas.target_roas,
       bidding_strategy.target_cpa.target_cpa_micros,
       bidding_strategy.maximize_conversions.target_cpa_micros
FROM bidding_strategy

A portfolio strategy is where the target most often "hides" — the field on the campaign itself comes back empty, so this is the resource that actually has it.

10. Shopping and product performance

SELECT segments.product_title, metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks,
       metrics.cost_micros, metrics.conversions, metrics.conversions_value
FROM shopping_performance_view
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS
ORDER BY metrics.cost_micros DESC

11. Account-level assets (sitelinks, callouts)

SELECT customer_asset.field_type, customer_asset.status,
       asset.id, asset.type
FROM customer_asset
WHERE customer_asset.status != 'REMOVED'

Check this before flagging "campaign has no sitelinks" — an account-level asset shows up on any campaign without its own, and skipping this query produces a false positive.

12. Budget pacing (standard pattern)

SELECT campaign.id, campaign.name,
       campaign_budget.amount_micros,
       campaign_budget.delivery_method,
       metrics.cost_micros
FROM campaign
WHERE campaign.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND segments.date DURING THIS_MONTH

This one is a standard pattern rather than a line lifted from a script — build your own pacing math on top of amount_micros versus month-to-date cost_micros.

Traps: metrics/segments, zero-impression rows, micros

The Query Validator — check before you deploy

Google publishes a Query Validator / Query Builder that checks segment, metric, and resource compatibility before you ever send a request. Resources split into two groups — those with metrics and those without — and the tool catches an invalid segment-metric combination before it becomes a runtime error in a script running unattended overnight. Worth running any new query shape through it once, especially before it goes into a scheduled job.

Limits and quotas

Per Google's quota documentation, a search or searchStream request counts as exactly one operation against your daily operation quota — regardless of how many rows or streaming batches come back. Paginated follow-up requests on a valid page token don't count again. Exceed the quota and you get RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED.

My own nightly reporting across all nine client accounts runs entirely on Explorer access — every query above works fine at that level. In my experience, stepping up to Basic Access mainly unlocks planning tools like Keyword Planner fields, not the reporting resources themselves; I wrote up the full application process, including the July 2026 fast-track, in the Basic Access guide.

Frequently asked questions