bidsmith query

query is a thin passthrough to Google Ads Query Language (GAQL). Pass it a query string; bidsmith authenticates, sends the query through SearchStream, and prints the result in your chosen format. No .bid files involved.

Useful for ad-hoc questions (“what’s the resource ID of the campaign named X?”, “list every conversion action in the account”) that don’t fit the plan/apply loop.

Synopsis

bidsmith query "QUERY" [--format table|json|tsv] [--verbose]

Arguments

Argument	Required?	Description
QUERY	yes	A GAQL query string (e.g. SELECT campaign.id, campaign.name FROM campaign).

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--format table|json|tsv	table	Output format. table for terminals, json for piping into jq, tsv for spreadsheets.
--verbose	—	Print the outgoing API request envelope and raw response.

Environment variables

Same as bidsmith plan.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Query ran successfully (zero rows is still success).
1	Authentication failure, malformed query, API error, or other.

Examples

Look up a campaign ID by name

bidsmith query "SELECT campaign.id, campaign.name FROM campaign WHERE campaign.name = 'Summer 2026 — Search'"

Prints a table:

campaign.id   campaign.name
9876543210    Summer 2026 — Search

List every conversion action

bidsmith query "SELECT conversion_action.id, conversion_action.name, conversion_action.category FROM conversion_action"

Export to a spreadsheet

bidsmith query "SELECT ad_group.name, ad_group.cpc_bid_micros FROM ad_group" --format tsv > bids.tsv

bids.tsv opens cleanly in Excel / Sheets / Numbers.

Feed another tool

bidsmith query "SELECT campaign.id FROM campaign" --format json | jq -r '.results[].campaign.id'

JSON output makes jq post-processing easy.

What you can query

Every Google Ads GAQL endpoint that’s read-only. See Google’s GAQL reference for the full grammar.

A few useful starting queries:

Question	Query
All campaign names	SELECT campaign.id, campaign.name FROM campaign
All ad groups in a campaign	SELECT ad_group.name FROM ad_group WHERE campaign.id = 9876543210
All keywords	SELECT ad_group_criterion.keyword.text, ad_group_criterion.keyword.match_type FROM keyword_view
Approval status of all RSAs	SELECT ad_group_ad.policy_summary.approval_status, ad_group_ad.ad.name FROM ad_group_ad WHERE ad_group_ad.ad.type = 'RESPONSIVE_SEARCH_AD'

What query doesn’t do

• No write queries. GAQL is read-only by design — there’s no way to mutate via this endpoint. For changes, use apply.
• No .bid integration. query doesn’t read your .bid files and doesn’t help with the diff/apply loop. It’s a standalone inspection tool.

Tip

query is the right tool for the “what’s in the account right now?” question. If the question is “what would change?”, plan is the answer. If the question is “what does bidsmith model of the account look like?”, refresh is the answer.

See also

• bidsmith plan --read-live — a per-resource-type count of what’s in the account.
• Google’s GAQL grammar.