If your conversion with cart data diagnostic status shows discrepancies or errors, you can refer to the alerts shown in the conversions with cart data diagnostics tool to fix them.
Types of alerts
Alerts provide more detailed information about specific issues with your conversions with cart data setup. Alerts are classified into 3 categories based on severity:
- Red Issues: Critical errors that require immediate attention.
- Yellow Issues: Errors that require your attention.
- Blue Opportunities: Areas where you can make improvements to your conversions with cart data setup.
Troubleshooting issues with conversions with cart data setup
Here’s how you can troubleshoot and fix various issues with your conversions with cart data setup.
Cart data reporting stopped
This means that while you’ve set up Conversions with cart data previously, recently none of the conversions have passed cart data parameters which is why your cart data metrics are not being reported at all. Review the affected conversion actions and check that your conversion tag has cart parameters implemented correctly.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to check if the parameters are passed correctly.
- After you’ve confirmed that a conversion action is not passing any cart data parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Many recent conversions don't have cart data
This means that while you’ve set up Conversions with cart data, many recent conversions are missing cart data parameters which is why the conversion data is not accurate. Review the affected conversion actions and check that your conversion tag has cart parameters implemented correctly.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to check if the parameters are passed correctly.
- After you’ve confirmed that a conversion action is not passing any cart data parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Some recent conversions don’t have cart data
This means that while you’ve set up Conversions with cart data, some recent conversions are missing cart data parameters which is why the conversion data is not accurate. Review the affected conversion actions and check that your conversion tag has cart parameters implemented correctly.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to check if the parameters are passed correctly.
- After you’ve confirmed that a conversion action is not passing any cart data parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Many recent conversions had empty carts
This means that while you’ve set up Conversions with cart data, many conversion events are passing the items[] parameter, but the items array is empty, as it doesn’t contain any item ID, price, or quantity parameters.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly, specifically that the items array parameter is not empty.
- To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to check if the items array includes the expected values (item_id, price, quantity) for every sold product.
- If your conversions are not passing those parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Some recent conversions had empty carts
This means that while you’ve set up Conversions with cart data, many conversion events are passing the items[] parameter, but the items array is empty, as it does not contain any item ID, price, or quantity parameters.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly, specifically that the items array parameter is not empty.
- To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to check if the items array includes the expected values (item_id, price, quantity) for every sold product.
Many recent conversions have cart data with formatting issues
This means that while you’ve set up Conversions with cart data, but, some cart data parameters are missing for many conversions, or they have an incorrect format.
To fix this, you can:
Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. Parameter issues include:
- Item ID missing: Make sure you’re sending an Item ID parameter for every product you sold.
- Item price incorrectly formatted or missing: Make sure you’re sending a single unit price for every item. Make sure the price is a valid number, for example, 12.50.
- Item quantity incorrectly formatted or missing: Make sure that the item quantity is valid for each product sold in the transaction, for example, 1.
- Discount incorrectly formatted: Make sure the discount value you’re sending is a positive number. The positive number will be subtracted from the cart’s revenue. Negative numbers, percentage values, or coupon codes will not be processed.
- After you’ve fixed the parameter issues, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to verify that the parameter issues no longer occur.
Some recent conversions have cart data with formatting issues
This means that while you’ve set up conversions with cart data, but, some cart data parameters are missing for some conversions, or they have an incorrect format.
To fix this, you can:
Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. Parameter issues include:
- Item ID missing: Make sure you’re sending an Item ID parameter for every product you sold
- Item price incorrectly formatted or missing: Make sure you’re sending a single unit price for every item. Make sure the price is a valid number, for example, 12.50.
- Item quantity incorrectly formatted or missing: Make sure that the item quantity is valid for each product sold in the transaction, for example, 1.
- Discount incorrectly formatted: Make sure the discount value you’re sending is a positive number. The positive number will be subtracted from the cart’s revenue. Negative numbers, percentage values, or coupon codes will not be processed.
After you’ve fixed the parameter issues, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as website or different versions of your app, to verify that the parameter issues no longer occur.
Many recent conversions have sold item IDs that can't be matched to Merchant Center
To fix this, you can:
- Download the list of item IDs flagged in the alert. These are the most recent item IDs that were not found in Merchant Center account linked to the Google Ads account.
- Check whether these specific item IDs are listed in your Merchant Center.
- Typically the items exist in your Merchant Center, but the value being passed in the transaction with items.item_id or items.id parameter is different from the id attribute in your Merchant Center.
- If this is the case, change the value that’s being passed in the transaction as items.item_id or items.id to match the value in the Merchant Center.
- Don’t change the id attribute value in the Google Merchant Center to match what’s being passed in the transaction. The value passed in the Google Merchant Center is used to track the product's performance history in Merchant Center and Google Ads. If you change the ID, you'll overwrite your product and its history.
- If these item IDs have not been added to your Google Merchant Center, consider adding these products to your Merchant Center.
- Recommendation: As a best practice, try to have every item sold on your website be included in your Merchant Center, even if you’re not actively targeting these items in your ad campaigns. Use the excluded_destination attribute to exclude items in your data source from showing for Shopping ads or free listings.
- If these item IDs exist in a Google Merchant Center account that’s currently not linked to your Google Ads account, link these accounts.
- If you have linked your Google Merchant Center and Shopify accounts and check item IDs not being matched, reach out to Shopify to rectify this.
- Typically the items exist in your Merchant Center, but the value being passed in the transaction with items.item_id or items.id parameter is different from the id attribute in your Merchant Center.
Some recent conversions have sold item IDs that can't be matched to Merchant Center
This means that while you’ve set up conversions with cart data, some recent conversions have item IDs that can't be matched to products in the Merchant Center. This could be because the item IDs passed in the conversion are incorrect or because products with those item IDs are in a Merchant Center account that isn't linked to your Google Ads account. Learn more about unmatched products.
To fix this, you can:
- Download the list of item IDs flagged in the alert. These are the most recent item IDs that were not found in Merchant Center account linked to the Google Ads account.
- Check whether these specific item IDs are listed in your Merchant Center.
- Typically the items exist in your Merchant Center, but the value being passed in the transaction with items.item_id or items.id parameter is different from the id attribute in your Merchant Center.
- If this is the case, change the value that’s being passed in the transaction as items.item_id or items.id to match the value in the Merchant Center.
- Don’t change the id attribute value in the Google Merchant Center to match what’s being passed in the transaction. The value passed in the Google Merchant Center is used to track the product's performance history in Merchant Center and Google Ads. If you change the ID, you'll overwrite your product and its history.
- If these item IDs have not been added to your Google Merchant Center, consider adding these products to your Merchant Center.
- Recommended: As a best practice, try to have every item sold on your website be included in your Merchant Center, even if you’re not actively targeting these items in your ad campaigns. Use the excluded_destination attribute to exclude items in your data source from showing for Shopping ads or free listings.
- Typically the items exist in your Merchant Center, but the value being passed in the transaction with items.item_id or items.id parameter is different from the id attribute in your Merchant Center.
- If these item IDs exist in a Google Merchant Center account that’s currently not linked to your Google Ads account, link these accounts.
- If you have linked your Google Merchant Center and Shopify accounts and find the item IDs not being matched, reach out to Shopify to rectify this.
Cost of goods sold is not available for all products sold in recent conversions
This means that some conversions reported products where we haven’t been able to lookup their cost of goods sold in your Merchant Center.
To fix this, you can:
- Download the products flagged in the alert. These are the most recent products that were found not to have cost of goods sold in your Merchant Center.
- Review your Merchant Center account for the products flagged and check if the cost of goods sold attribute is correctly set for these items.