We have identified a change that Target has made to their site that impacts our collection of sponsored product search data. It is NOT impacting any other data on the Target.com dataset including organic search data and category data.
Dataset Impacted: Target.com
Data impacted: Sponsored Product Search
Impacted Timeframe: Feb 16, 2022 - Mar 16, 2022
Resolution: All data collection has been resolved as of Mar 17, 2022
How does this impact my data?
Target keyword results have both organic and paid slots available on them. While the keyword data was still being collected and all organic search results remain intact for the period, only the sponsored slots on the page were impacted with the Target.com changes made by the retailer. The impacted data will appear as either a gap in a chart or the dates on the chart will skip the affected period if there is no organic data being displayed. This does not affect any category best seller data or organic keyword shelves in the Target.com dataset.
Recommended Workaround:
We recommend using historical data before and after the affected period to understand the trends or look at the data on a monthly basis instead of weekly to identify the sponsored product search data.