Troubleshoot connection issues

You can use the data source diagnostics tool to find and fix issues with your data connections, ensuring your data connections are in a healthy state. You can access the data source diagnostics tool from the Data managerpage in Google Ads.

Open the diagnostics tool

From the Data manager page:

1. In your Google Ads account, open Data manager .
2. Connections with issues have a “Needs attention” or “Urgent” status indicator. Hover over a status indicator to see a card with details and recommended actions.
3. Click on a recommended action to complete it, or click on View all issuesto see all diagnostic details for the connection.

From other pages, such as Conversions or Audience manager:

1. Open the settings for one of your connections.
2. In the connection settings, go to the Connection quality subsection of the Manage your connection card.
3. View the connection quality status, then click to find and fix detected connection issues.

Connection quality statuses

The diagnostics tool shows the following connection quality statuses to highlight detected issues, their severity, and how to fix them. When you fix an issue, the status updates to show the improved connection quality.

Needs attention

Your data is being imported, but there are issues that should be addressed to prevent impact to your measurement.

Needs attention means an issue with the connection needs your attention. The issue should be fixed, but the issue isn't critical.

Urgent

Critical data source connection issues are preventing your data from being imported which is impacting your measurement.

An urgent status indicates a critical issue with the connection that requires immediate attention to maintain accurate measurement. For example, if the connection was previously running but hasn't run in the last 48 hours, causing data to drop to zero, an urgent status will be triggered. To resolve an urgent status, review your setup to ensure the connection is correctly configured.

Data source diagnostics

We may show you one or more of the following diagnostics to help you identify and troubleshoot issues with your connection setup:

• Invalid DATA_SOURCE credentials: This diagnostic appears when we've detected that the credentials you have provided, such as user name or password, have been rejected by the data source. This can happen when the credentials are changed, or the credentials no longer have permission to access the connected data. To fix this issue, confirm that you have the correct credentials and that they are permitted to access the data source, then reinitiate the connection setup to try authorizing again.
• History tracking disabled in Salesforce: This diagnostic appears when we've detected that Event History Tracking is not enabled in your Salesforce account. Event history tracking is required in order to import data from Salesforce. To fix this issue, enable event history tracking in your Salesforce account .
• Invalid DATA_SOURCE format: This diagnostic appears when we've detected one or more formatting issues in your data source. To fix this issue, verify that your data is properly formatted and transform your data as needed. Also, review requirements in the guide for the data source .
• Source for DATA_SOURCE not found: This diagnostic appears when we've detected that a connector has an issue, but the specific cause of it could be due to a variety of reasons. Common reasons for this issue:
  • Target object, such as a table or file, is deleted.
  • No permission to access the data source.

To fix this issue, check whether the data source exists. If it exists, ensure that the credentials are valid, and that data sharing permissions are granted.

• Transaction ID overlap rate was less than 10% for the past 2 days: Less than 10% of transaction_id received from additional data sources were found to overlap with the transaction_id received from the tag. If the overlap rate between your additional data sources and Google tag is low, identical events could be counted multiple times. Ensure the transaction ID is unique for every purchase, sent with every tag event, and exactly matches between your tag and additional data sources. To fix this issue, follow these steps:
  1. Check for transaction_id formatting discrepancies: Review the transaction_id setup in your Google tag and additional data sources and look for common formatting errors:
     • Prefixes or suffixes: order-12345 vs. 12345
     • Case sensitivity: abc-123 vs. ABC-123
     • Data type: 12345 vs. 12345.0
     • Leading zeros or different lengths: 00123 vs. 123
     • Dummy or placeholder IDs: Check for placeholder values like undefined or order_id being passed.
  2. Investigate partial transaction_id coverage from the tag: A low overlap rate can occur if the tag only intermittently collects transaction_ids. Ensure that transaction_id is sent on every tag ping. Common root cause is due to incorrect tagging logic on a subset of conversion pages. Learn how to set up transaction IDs for website conversions .
• Incompatible data structure in DATA_SOURCE: This diagnostic appears when your data’s structure doesn’t match your connection settings. To fix this issue, review your column definitions and ensure that your data matches.
• Missing required column: COLUMN_NAME: This diagnostic appears if the mapped field, COLUMN_NAME isn’t found in your data source. To resolve data import issues, check your data source mapping , filters , or transformation setup.
• Connection failed its last run: This diagnostic appears when no recent data could be imported due to a user or system error. To resolve this issue:
  • Review the logs table on the connection’s details page for error codes and a resolution.
  • If the problem persists for more than three days, contact Google support .

Related links

• Prepare your data for import - Google Ads Data Manager Help
• Troubleshoot tag issues with Tag Diagnostics - Google Ads Help