Weird behaviors in our Google Sandbox account

[Han Vo]

Hi there,

We're testing new Account creation using one of our sandbox account (Which already had 100 accounts - which is the current limit according to Google doc). I believe that why we encoutered TEST_ACCOUNT_LINK_ERROR (which indicates "Error involving test accounts (mixed types) or too many child accounts.") response from your API. After moving around 7 accounts off to another sandbox account (through link-unlink process); now we're down to 93 accounts in this sandbox account. However we are still getting this TEST_ACCOUNT_LINK_ERROR error. Further more, I couldn't even create a new account though Google UI; and getting this error "The manager cannot create more client accounts". Please also confirm that 100 accounts is still the current limit. What should we be doing here to resolve this issue? 

Thank you

[Milind Sankeshware (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Han,

Yes, you can only have 100 accounts in the hierarchy of a test manager account. You can perform a ManagedCustomerService.get() request for the top-level MCC and check the totalNumEntries to get the total number of AdWords accounts in this hierarchy. Could you please confirm you have unlink the account successfully? You could use ManagedCustomerService.mutateLink() method and set the LinkStatus to INACTIVE to unlink an account. Please check this guide for more information.

Thanks,
Milind, AdWords API Team.

[dhmitc...@gmail.com]

So, we can unlink test accounts and google will handle the garbage collection or set of orphans wo any problems? That is, my integration CI tests can create and unlink hundreds of test accounts per week wo causing any problems?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi,

Thank you for the reply for this post.

It appears that this question is related to your comment on this forum post https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/k-4aaBX_hBU/m/soZGfHR1AgAJ. Unfortunately, as I mentioned on that forum thread, I am afraid that you cannot remove test accounts from your MCC as it doesn’t support the remove function. This is only applicable for unlinking production MCC account and production client account.

Regards,

Ernie John Blanca Tacata Google Ads API Team

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[dhmitc...@gmail.com]

so, just to clarify, 

1. is there a limit on the number of test accounts?
2. if so, what happens when you exceed that limit?
3. do the test accounts compete w production accounts for capacity in the mcc?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Don,

Thank you for the information. I work with Ernie and let me assist you. Please find my response to your questions below:
 

1. You can only have 50 accounts in the hierarchy of a test manager account.

 

2. You will not be able to create a new test client account under the test manager account if it reached the 50 accounts limit.

 

3. The test account and production account are two different categories. The test account could not be linked to a production account and vice versa. This is simply because the test accounts are only for the development purpose and they do not serve real ads.

 

Thanks and regards,
Xiaoming, Google Ads API Team

Xiaoming Google Ads API Team

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