Over the past couple weeks, many advertisers and marketers have been reporting that the Google Keyword Planner tool has been removing people's access for those who do not have active campaigns. It worked for me, with and without active campaigns but some said it did not. I felt it was a technical issue on the user's end, but I was wrong, it was a technical bug on Google's end.
After much conspiracy theory around it, Google confirmed, it was a bug and they are working on fixing it.
Some users may see this error message, here is a screen shot from @mikkopiippo:
Google said this is just a bug, that you do not need to have an active campaign, you do not need to pay or anything to use this tool. You just need to login to use it like before. Google is working on a fix and will let us know when the fix is out:
Here are some tweets from AdWords:
@marktraphagen @rustybrick @pedrodias @jenstar Hey Mark - yes, you still need an account (even if it's inactive) to use the planner. -Ian
— Google AdWords (@adwords) June 27, 2016
@recalibrate @jenstar @rustybrick @pedrodias To clarify, you do not need an active campaign to use the Keyword Planner. (2)
— Google AdWords (@adwords) June 27, 2016
@jenstar @marktraphagen @rustybrick @pedrodias You should still be able to use the Keyword Planner without billing information. -Jarett (2)
— Google AdWords (@adwords) June 27, 2016
@pedrodias Correct, Pedro. We'll follow up with you as soon as we have an update. -Spence
— Google AdWords (@adwords) June 27, 2016
Forum discussion at Twitter.