Issues when uploading offline conversions

[Selcuk]

Hey!

We recently got our standard access for the API and are now beta-testing with a small group of customers. The feature we are testing is as follows:

1. The users logs in with Google

2. The user selects a customer ID

3. The system creates some conversion actions (for example for PAGE_VIEW). These events have a click-through window of 21 days.

4. The system uploads offline conversions to the corresponding conversion actions.

The way we send these conversion actions is as follows:

1. User clicks on an advertisement and gets redirected to the webshop.

2. We store the gclic/gbraid/wbraid for a maximum of 2 weeks

3. We use the identifier to send events to our API, which in turn uploads conversions to Google Ads.

We have a customer which connected his store yesterday, and we are now receiving the following error: The imported event can't be recorded because its click occurred before this conversion's click-through window. Make sure you import the most recent data

How is this possible? We have not sent any gclid/gbraid/wbraids that are older than a day. The only possible explanation I can think of is that maybe the click-through window starts at the moment the conversion action is created (so not always 21 days back, but at most 21 days back up to the creation date). Is this true, or is there another reason I am not seeing?

Kind regards,

Selcuk

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Selcuk,

Thank you for reaching out to the Google Ads API support team.

After reviewing your query, it appears that you are facing an 'EXPIRED_EVENT' error. If the conversion action was created recently, then the click-through window for that conversion action will also be recent. This means that any imported events that occurred more than 21 days ago will not be recorded for that conversion action. As you mentioned that the customer 
connected his store yesterday, so the conversion action will be recent, this may be the reason you are facing this error. 

I would suggest you to check the creation date of the conversion action to make sure that the click-through window is long enough to include the imported events. You may refer to this guide for more information. To investigate the issue further, provide us with the complete API logs (request and response with request-id and request header) generated at your end.

If you are using a client library and haven't enabled the logging yet, I would request you to enable logging for the specific client library that you are using. You can refer to the guides Java, .Net, PHP, Python, Ruby or Perl to enable logging at your end. For REST interface requests, you can enable logging via the curl command by using the -i flag.

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This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02qWvxD:ref"

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team

 

 

[Selcuk]

Hey,

I will work on getting the logs, but just to be clear: 

If the conversion action was created for example yesterday with a click-through window of 21 days, but the GCLID is 2 days old, this GCLID could not be used for the conversion action because it is older than the conversion action? Is this correct?

Kind regards,

Selcuk Tekin

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Selcuk,

Thank you for getting back to us. 

Yes, your statement is correct. If the conversion action was created yesterday with a click-through window of 21 days, a GCLID that is 2 days old could not be used for the conversion action because it is older than the conversion action.

You may double-check if the given identifier is not too old or occurred before the lookback window for the specified combination of conversion date and conversion action. You may use the click_view report resource to verify your GCLID. In addition, you can first verify the click_through_lookback_window_days specified in your conversion_action. From the value retrieved, then perform a request using the click_view report for each day (with date filter for one day) until the last valid date, in reference to the lookback window days.

As requested earlier, kindly provide us with the complete API logs (request and response logs with request-id and request header) generated at your end and uncropped UI screenshot of the Google Ads account where you are facing the issue.