Fix your website visitor data segments, tags and ads

To provide a comprehensive and consolidated view of your audiences and make audience management and optimisation simpler, you’ll find the following improvements in Google Ads:

  • New audience reporting
    Detailed reporting about audience demographics, segments and exclusions is now consolidated in one place. Click the campaigns icon Campaigns Icon and open the 'Audiences, keywords and content' tab, then click Audiences. You can also easily manage your audiences from this report page. Learn more about audience reporting.
  • New terms
    We’re using new terms on your audience report and throughout Google Ads. For example, 'audience types' (these include similar, custom, in-market and affinity) are now referred to as audience segments and 'remarketing' is now referred to as 'your data'. Learn more about the Updates to Audience terms and phrases.

If you find your campaign that uses your data for audience targeting isn't performing as expected, it may be due to specific problems with your data segments, tag snippets or ads. For more information, you can review our list of common issues and find out how to fix them.

Before you begin

The Overview page will surface important account status information to help you understand and resolve issues with campaigns that use your data for audience targeting. These may include issues with your ad groups and audience sources. You’ll find 3 types of alerts:

  1. Critical health and/or performance issues that require a resolution for your ads to continue serving.
  2. Issues that require attention to reach the full potential of your ads and maintain a healthy campaign.
  3. A health status informing you that your campaigns using your data for audience targeting, ad groups and audience sources are working as expected.

No visitors on the list

You may not have added the Google tag correctly.

  • You edited the tag snippet in some way when you copied and pasted from Google Ads to your site. For example, if you paste the code into an email before implementing a copy of it on your site, the spacing of the code often changes.
  • You didn't paste the tag snippet above the '/head' tag of your site code.
You can check your code using Tag Assistant, a Chrome extension that automatically verifies Google code snippets on any page. Download and install Tag Assistant from the Google Chrome Store.

The rule you created is incorrect or doesn't match your site URL. For example, you create your data segment using 'URL contains television', but the URL of the televisions section of your site includes the term 'televisions' (in plural). So the list doesn't match your URL.

Also, read about your data segments for details on list size requirements.

A website visitor or app user data segment isn't growing in size

A website visitor or app user data segment may not be growing because of a tag snippet modification. If you've exchanged tag snippets by email, for example, bear in mind that email programs modify the formatting of tag snippets. We suggest sending tag snippets as file attachments and using a program that doesn't change the formatting, such as a plain text editor like Notepad for PC or TextEdit for Mac.

It's also possible that you didn't add the tag snippet correctly on your website. If that's the case, you can find more information about how to tag your website using Google Ads.

If your list remains steady, with very few cookies, here are some recommendations:

  • Check that the traffic for the pages with your Google tag snippets is high enough. If the traffic is low, your lists might be too specific. Consider removing targeting restrictions (for example, country and language) or tagging site pages that have higher traffic volume.
  • Make sure that the membership duration of your data segment is long enough. If you set a short duration, the segment might not accumulate enough cookies. You can edit the membership duration of the list at any time.

Ad isn't showing

Here are some possible reasons why your ad isn't showing and some troubleshooting tips:

  • Google Ads only shows ads to your data segments that have more than 100 users.
    • In the previous AdWords experience, you can check your list size by clicking the Shared Library link in the left navigation bar, and then the Audiences link.
    • In the new Google Ads experience, you can follow these steps to check the size of your data segment:
Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page that you’re searching for.
  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools Icon.
  2. Click the Shared library drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Audience Manager.
  • For newly created segments and custom combinations, it may take up to 24 hours for a campaign to report impressions.
  • If it's been longer than 24 hours:
    • Check that your budget is still active.
    • Check your ad status. Make sure that your ads aren't classified as sexual content.
For advertisers who have the previous version of the global site tag – Can't view the Google tag

In the past, when you created your Google tag, you could view and copy the tag by clicking the link in the 'Tags/Rules' column in the Audiences table, in the Shared library. In the new version, you'll see this link only for your older segments and the 'Main list' that Google Ads created for you.

In the new version, you'll see your data in different types of segments. Here are some of them:

  • Website visitors
  • Combined segments

The tag for your 'Main list' and any other data segments that you created in the former version will be labelled 'Tag-based'.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
6429201123164965349
true
Search Help Centre
true
true
true
true
true
73067
false
false
false