RateExceededError occurring a lot more often today

[Alexander Nitschke]

Hi,

we are using the TrafficEstimatorService in our UI to give advice for expected clicks and cost during campaign creation (similar to the Adwords UI). This used to work fine, but today this feature is practically broken. The reason is a very often occurring RateExceededError (which we practially never saw during the history of this feature use). The detailed error message is:

[RateExceededError <rateName=RATE_LIMIT, rateKey=null, rateScope=ACCOUNT, retryAfterSeconds=30>]

This is rather nondescript as far as error details go... but at least it actually suggests that the scope of this error is ACCOUNT, right? This seems to be just not true, as this error also can occur in the first ever usage of the TrafficEstimatorService for an account. In my tries it seems more like the Rate is affected over all accounts of an MCC (or maybe even over the developer token?). First call after some pause works, but another call on a different account soon after might not work. This behaviour makes this error especially painful as you can imagine.

I know that the TrafficEstimatorService might be a sensible service to use, but our usage is just as intended and historically does not produce an excessive number of calls over any span of time, quite on the contrary.

I'm still hoping the TrafficEstimatorService is just having a bad day and the issue gets resolved soon?!? 

Note: A few weeks ago there was another bad TrafficEstimator day with the estimates being all over the place (like submissing fewer keywords, and getting more instead of fewer clicks etc). This could be reproduced in the Adwords UI actually, so it wasn't an API matter and thus not relevant for this forum; luckily the next day everything was back to normal. But this time it really looks like an API problem, so now here is my call for help.

Best regards,

Alexander

[Stefan Kleine Stegemann]

Hi, 

starting this morning, we're experiencing similar issues. The throughput rates we've got from the TrafficEstimatorService were pretty stable over the past months but today, we get a lot of RateExceededErrors (the same as illustrated by Alexander). Waiting for 30 seconds sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. We've already noticed a slight increase in RateExceededErrors over the past days and they were always recoverable. Now, we wonder if the rate limit for the TrafficEstimatorService has been changed or if this is just a temporary behavior.

Best regards,

Stefan

[Stacie Waleyko]

Hi,

We are seeing the exact same issues as Stefan and Alexander. We contacted support last Wednesday when the REEs first started appearing and was told it was an issue on Google's end. Is that still true for the REEs we are getting today?

Thanks,

Stacie

[Umesh Dengale]

Hi Stacie,

We had a known issue with TIS/TES which coincides with the time the users were facing issues. Things should be better now, so you should no longer see the errors. we haven't changed the rate limits at our end, but this also depends on the load on our servers.

Thanks,

Umesh, AdWords API Team.

[Stefan Kleine Stegemann]

Hi,

thanks for your Update, Umesh. However, so far, we did not notice any improvement. In fact, today we get more rate limit errors than yesterday.

Best regards,

Stefan

[Alexander Nitschke]

I can confirm that. It's more or less the same as of now. I will monitor this and look if there is improvement.

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Alexander,

Thanks for the confirmation. I'm checking with the engineers working on these services now to see if they implemented the fix for this, yet. I'll get back to you as soon as I hear back from them. In the meantime, please keep me updated if you see an improvement.

Thanks,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Alexander,

Here's a quick update. I confirmed that they're still working on a solution. I'll update this thread as I hear more.

Cheers,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Alexander,

The engineers told me they've found a solution, and you shouldn't be seeing these issues anymore. 

Best,

Nadine, AdWords API Team