Issue on Conversion Time which getting an error OfflineConversionError.CONVERSION_PRECEDES_CLICK

[Joey Belarmino]

Hi Adwords API Team,

I've read in a blog (http://www.ewanheming.com/adwords-api-offline-conversion-import) that the conversion time - timezone should be the same as our Adwords Account Timezone.

I followed this and converted the datetime field to the adwords timezone and when uploading through API added the timezone ID as per documentation which is "Europe/Dublin"

The ctcLookbackWindow settings is 90 and viewthroughLookbackwindow is 30 for the conversion name created. 

Upon testing our script just today and trying to upload data from October 23rd, we are getting the error OfflineConversionError.CONVERSION_PRECEDES_CLICK

So it seems that the conversiontime timezone is incorrect. 

Can you please help me in finding out what is wrong, our client Id is 766-238-4385, and here's a snapshot of the soap xml log:

 [Oct 26 2014 17:36:19.000000 - ERROR] POST /api/adwords/cm/v201406/OfflineConversionFeedService HTTP/1.1                                                                                                    

Host: adwords.google.com                                                                                                                                                                                    

Connection: Keep-Alive                                                                                                                                                                                      

User-Agent: PHP-SOAP/5.4.32, gzip                                                                                                                                                                           

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate                                                                                                                                                                              

Content-Encoding: gzip                                                                                                                                                                                      

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8                                                                                                                                                                       

SOAPAction: ""                                                                                                                                                                                              

Content-Length: 63926                                                                                                                                                                                       

Authorization: Bearer ya29.qgBY0RCusI-Ln2fPa_jixEtk4R3DS6iWEULe3UKzUsTFAle9nzm2dIZY4DQ2LeqXQgs-B2t7nSgalw                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                            

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>                                                                                                                                                                      

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/cm/v201406">                                                                

  <SOAP-ENV:Header>                                                                                                                                                                                         

    <ns1:RequestHeader>                                                                                                                                                                                     

      <ns1:clientCustomerId>766-238-4385</ns1:clientCustomerId>                                                                                                                                             

      <ns1:developerToken></ns1:developerToken>                                                                                                                                       

      <ns1:userAgent>AwApi-PHP/5.5.0, Common-PHP/5.5.0, PHP/5.4.32)</ns1:userAgent>                                                                                                                

    </ns1:RequestHeader>                                                                                                                                                                                    

  </SOAP-ENV:Header>            

<ns1:operations>                                                                                                                                                                                      

        <ns1:operator>ADD</ns1:operator>                                                                                                                                                                    

        <ns1:operand>                                                                                                                                                                                       

          <ns1:googleClickId>COTv5PK-xMECFeVaMgodjCUAlg</ns1:googleClickId>                                                                                                                                 

          <ns1:conversionName>dealsfound</ns1:conversionName>                                                                                                                                               

          <ns1:conversionTime>20141024 045116 Europe/Dublin</ns1:conversionTime>                                                                                                                            

          <ns1:conversionValue>0</ns1:conversionValue>                                                                                                                                                      

        </ns1:operand>                                                                                                                                                                                      

      </ns1:operations>                  

Thank you !

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi,

You do need to specify a timezone, but it does not have to be the timezone of the account (see the Importing Conversions guide).

In your particular case, the click occurred at:

2014-10-24 04:51:15 GMT

Your upload has conversion time:

2014-10-24 04:51:16 Europe/Dublin

Note that as of 2014-10-24, Europe/Dublin was GMT+1:00, which means the time you specified converts to the following in GMT (subtract an hour):

2014-10-24 03:51:16 GMT

Since that is 59 minutes 59 seconds before the click time, the API returns the CONVERSION_PRECEDES_CLICK error.

To resolve this, make sure that you are performing the proper conversions to the timezone you are using in your upload. Let me know if this doesn't help resolve the issue.

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Marlon Haniff]

Hi Josh,

We are using a Ruby script and getting the following with API version v201409:

AdwordsApi::V201409::OfflineConversionFeedService::ApiException - [OfflineConversionError.CONVERSION_PRECEDES_CLICK @ operations[0].operand]

Our DATETIME_FORMAT = "%Y%m%d %H%M%S America/New_York" - is this correct?

Also, we have only one conversion to report in the database which was generated a couple weeks ago.  Over the last week of we have refreshed tokens etc - could this be the reason?

Thanks,
Marlon

[Marlon Haniff]

FIXED!!!!

Conversions were reported back to my database with a time zone 3 hours behind me, hence the confusion of the click/conversion time span.  BTW, I used the same format below by including the Region/City after the date.

All the best,

Marlon